re-title.com Feature Newsletter Mixed / Multi Media May 2011

28 April 2011	Mixed / Multi Media
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GALERIE BARBARA THUMM, Berlin

MITTERRAND+SANZ, Zurich

BRUTTO GUSTO, Berlin

MATT ROBERTS ARTS, London

GALERIE BARBARA THUMM, Berlin

Fiona Banner, Snoopy Vs The Red Baron, 2011
Silver gelatin photograph, Frame
29 x 36cm
(caption: Nose Art on Tornado ZA471, Operation Desert Storm, 1991)
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

FIONA BANNER

SNOOPY VS THE RED BARON

April 30 – July 02, 2011
Private View: Friday, April 29, 4 – 9 pm

Fiona Banner's practice centres on the problems and possibilities of language, both written and metaphorical. From her 'wordscapes' to her use of found and transformed military aircraft, Banner juxtaposes the brutal and the sensual, performing an almost complete cycle of intimacy, attraction and alienation.

In this exhibition the artist alternates between the pathos of battle in her monumental sculptures, and the gentle humour of her works on paper, as she looks at how we mythologize ourselves and our history, and our willingness to be seduced by our own myths.

The title of the show is taken from a 1966 hit song, which describes the battle between Snoopy and World War 1 flying ace The Red Baron. The song music was never published for legal reasons; Snoopy's owners sued the band over use of his name. For this show, Banner has created sheet music re-interpreting the original pop song, turning it into an annotated fugue.

Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts with his star character Snoopy was born of a booming, paranoid, post-war culture. His universe is populated by beings who anthropomorphize the parts of ourselves that we constantly grapple with, but ultimately fail to understand.

As well as being a Beagle, Snoopy is a World War 1 flying ace, a little boy's pet, and an aspiring great novelist. Snoopy wants to become The Red Baron, and is obsessed with killing him but he knows that the Baron exists only in his mind, a heroicised representation of fear.

The real Red Baron, German fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918) was eventually shot down in combat and died from a single bullet to the heart. He famously delighted in killing, shooting down eighty planes during the war, more than any other pilot. On news of his death souvenir hunters stripped his plane of its parts. Richthofen was legendary in his own lifetime, partly thanks to wartime propaganda, and mythologized posthumously. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery in Berlin.

In the gallery, Banner's sculpture Wing, 2011 made from the wing of a Tornado fighter plane, stands upended and statuesque. It too is anthropomorphized. Stripped back and polished to a mirror finish, the wing reflects the viewer back at themselves.

Banners graphite works, fifty drawn and rebound dummy figure drawing manuals, Life Drawing Drawings 2007-2011, also reference our relationship with our own image. Yet here it is the books that have been drawn, not the human figure. This parody, with its allusions to the romantic notion of the artist, references Banner's previous text works.

Banner has worked directly with the nude, making verbal descriptions, and staging performances in which she recreates the formal architecture of the life room, looking not only at the act of observation, but also at the act of creation, both parodying it and yet revealing new intimacies. Banner once said, "Every life drawing, good or bad is an attempt to stall time for long enough to make some kind of reflection, assert some kind of control over our own mortality, in a way that is absurdly literal but also tender".

The books, with their empty pages, allude to drawings unmade and biographies unwritten. Like Snoopy's unrequited quest to be a great novelist these books are our own unwritten portraits, constantly in flux.

Fiona Banner, born 1966 in Britain graduated from Goldsmiths College London in 1993. Her works are exhibited in renowned international museums, including in collections at The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Tate Gallery (London), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). In 2001 Fiona Banner was represented at the Berlin Biennial. In 2010 her installation Harrier and Jaguar was presented in The Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. In 2002 Fiona Banner was nominated for the Turner Prize. This is her fifth show at Galerie Barbara Thumm. The artist lives and works in London.

Galerie Barbara Thumm

Markgrafenstrasse 68

D - 10969 Berlin

T +49 30 283 903 47

GALERIE BARBARA THUMM

Fiona Banner

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MITTERRAND+SANZ, Zurich

Ion Grigorescu, La couronne de Ruxandra, 1984

Silver print B&W and watercolor / H 101 x 66 cm

5 painted copies

Courtesy of Mitterrand+Sanz Contemporary Art, Zurich

ION GRIGORESCU

07.05.11 - 04.06.11
Opening May 6, 2011 6-8 pm

Introduction by the curator Ami Barak at 7:30pm

Born in 1945, Ion Grigorescu, who lives and works in Bucarest, is one of the artistic figures that have been most iconic of post-war Romania.

His work has long remained confidential and it’s only a few years ago that his reputation started growing outside his native country. The artistic community now agrees he is an artist of exception and his past and present works give us precious bearings on the contemporary artistic scene.

Mitterrand+Sanz is very proud to present Ion Grigorescu’s first solo show in Switzerland. With several works, photographs and films, historic for most of them, we show a range of Grigorescu’s opus.

Since 1967, Ion Grigorescu has tackled questions related to sexuality, the body, the landscape and of course the omnipresence of politics, be it from the point of view of the communist regime or of triumphant capitalism. Throughout the long communist rule in Romania, the artist worked in hiding and anonymously, even using self-censorship. His approach has always gone beyond the performative and intimate dimension in spite of his propensity to find his inspiration in his own private world.

Over the past few years, several international shows, among which Documenta 12 in Kassel 2007, the Berlin Biennale and Les Promesses du Passé in Pompidou Center Paris, 2010, Out of Place Tate Moderne 2011 as well as the retrospective In the Body of the Victim 1969–2008 at Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw curated by Kathrin Rhomberg, gave us a glimpse of a rich and fascinating opus. This year the artist is going to represent Romania at the Venice Biennale.

The curator of the show is Ami Barak. He curates amongst other things the Romanian Pavilion with Ion Grigorescu as protagonist at the Venice Biennale this year (4. June – 27. Nov. 2011).

MITTERRAND+SANZ

Limmatstrasse 265

8005 Zurich

Switzerland

T: +41 43 817 68 70

opening hours: Tue - Fri 12-6pm and Sat. 11-5pm

MITTERRAND+SANZ

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BRUTTO GUSTO, Berlin

Cathy Coëz
"#08 Black" - 2009 - 34 X Ø 10,9 cm.
© the artist, courtesy of Brutto Gusto, Berlin

Cathy COËZ
BACK FROM WAR

29.04. - 02.07.2011

Multi-talented French artist Cathy Coez’s ceramic work focusses on how compositional elements function and questions the medium itself. The clay (earthenware or porcelain) is tirelessly thrown. Hundreds of pieces, all different, are created one after the other and sometimes from one another, inevitably creating formal families. This ability to take so much wealth from this generous substance fascinates the artist, as much as the variety of forms that we can observe in nature. Visiting the mineralogical section of the Museum für Naturkunde (natural history museum in Berlin) was her most recent moving experience : « I feel kind of hypnotized by the abundance, the constant creation of nature».

Her technique is particularly impressive given that she has only been doing it for two years. « Shapes seem to naturally emerge from between my fingers » says the artist. Her patience in accumulating the number of ceramics necessary to complete her projects, which are usually museum-sized, leaves a strong imprint on even the most well-informed viewer.

Cathy Coez’s works are most often organized geometrically : a circle, a disc, an ellipse or a square. They are made out of hundreds of pieces carefully thought out and thrown on a potter’s wheel. Hung on walls, they create three-dimensional drawings that the artist calls « Clay drawings ». Conceived through a computer vector drawing program, the overall organization of each work is thorough and methodical, each element placed with millimetric precision. The final shape of the work refuses any pointless references, rather it responds to a research into the aesthetics of purity and simplicity. This is also found in the creative process : « ... throwing is drawing the character of a shape in space, setting its nature by concentrating on its volume, its proportions, its profile. » Make no mistake about this, what matters to the artist is that her works are not about sculpture, but about drawing. They are in three dimensions certainly, but always existing on a plane, on a vertical wall, like a painting. The titles are purely technical, for example “Clay drawing #15 Yellow fluoro 230”. They simply remind the audience they are drawings. They function without narrative and convey the essential: the material, the chronological order of production, the color and the number of pieces that form the drawing. The diameter and the height of each thrown object is between half a centimeter and thirty centimeters. There is a hole behind each piece which allows the insertion of a nail and the work to be hanged on to a wall. The result? Magnificent universes, spaces of freedom and pleasure.

Each work operates like a system composed of fractions, of thrown fragments, little worlds in themselves. These complete entities, that we may think independent, truly belong to each other like atomic molecules. “Through the concept of a segmented structure, a construction where each constituent is a part and the whole at the same time is made possible.” Coez says. This method gives significance to every detail while revealing the complete cohesion of the work.

When we take a closer look at her work we discover a link between the sophisticated nature of the units and the monumental size of the whole, giving life to a sort of macrocosm/microcosm relationship.

It may seem strange, looking at her productivity, but Cathy Coez uses a process of elimination. She explains to us for example her relationship with color:” ... in my previous silk-screen printing work I was looking for a very dense palette of colors, the richer the better, curiosity always taking me farther, but today it looks like it’s the opposite that matters to me: a purifying monochrome approach. I find it more relevant to create large compositions invading space with as little means as possible, to focus on what can’t be ignored, its substance. Passing time may be the cause of this change, making me feel like I need to reach the heart of things”. In concrete terms her use of color borrows from classical glazing techniques, but can also be inspired by non-ceramic coloring materials. This gives the artist the opportunity to explore a much wider field of possibilities. It gives a variety of textures: from extremely shiny using glaze, to a matt or satin finish using spray-paint, that by contrast, intensifies the singularity of each work of art. In fact there is no way the artist would take the same path twice.

The devices used by Cathy Coez create a pluralistic reading of each “Clay drawing”. The spectator can look frontally, from a distance, as he looks at a painting in its entirety. When he comes closer to it an inevitable metamorphosis happens and the comprehension takes another turn. Every moving part of a “Clay drawing” mechanism is visible and this exhilarating transparence works wonderfully. The mutation is almost magical.

To fully understand this work you need to take the time for a closer look. The clay is pushed to its boundaries. The figures’ variety is endless. Her approach to color provides the artist with a reason for untiringly discovering new techniques and to gather elements without inhibition. Cathy Coez inquisite approach in breaking new grounds will always amaze us. This attitude towards ceramic is unique. Cathy Coez’s aspiration is to offer her audience with an ecstatic encounter.

Brutto Gusto fine_arts

Torstrasse 175

D.10115 Berlin

T +49 (0) 30 3087 4646

Montag bis Samstag 12 bis 18 Uhr

BRUTTO GUSTO

Cathy COËZ

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MATT ROBERTS ARTS, London

Julie Cockburn, The Adulterer, 2011

Mixed Media

JULIE COCKBURN
The Foul Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

5th - 29th May 2011

Julie Cockburn’s mixed media works transform idealised models of their time, carefully obliterating them with collaged or stitched bindings. As if highlighting something invisible in the original text, Cockburn reveals a drama of the everyman through a manipulation of found photographic and painted portraits.

Retrieving characters from obscurity, Cockburn takes ownership of their fates, cherishing them and creating something monstrously exquisite:

“ There is something that happens beyond my control... it is greater than the sum of its simple parts, becoming a new image with a new history to unfurl and, by association, a new memory. Perhaps it is something about the vulnerability of being human that I am trying to address. “

Traditionally portraiture was used to convey the status of the depicted: their role, their beauty, their assets, their power, how we wish others to see and think of us. However Cockburn denies the viewer the ability to connect with the subjects in this way. The people that are scarred and scored into are riddles of identity.

The works are meticulous, carefully sourced and appropriated. Playing with contrasts between mass-produced and hand crafted, perfection and deformity, Cockburn’s pieces project a macabre quiet, fragile, fragmented and very human.

Cockburn’s influences include the traditions of Cubist painting and the craft techniques of inlay and embroidery. “The Adulterer” a fragmented face of an upstanding gentleman, uses geometric patterning to describe a fractured pride or multi-faceted psyche. “Buttercup Girl” is a bittersweet assemblage of a young woman whose gaze is destined to meet us/the world through an airtight, acrid yellow. “Mary”, an embroidered tattoo work, combines melancholy and strength, the sitter’s thoughtful pose is highlighted by carefully chosen embroidery threads that trace the contours of her face. In “Caja” the framework of a black embroidered cage is sculpted onto a photograph of a seemingly carefree woman, subtly inviting the viewer into a 3-dimensional confinement where we might begin a process of empathy and insight. The world may never have missed the original cast, but through her empathic interaction with the characters, Cockburn invites us to wonder who they might have been and, possibly, who we are.

Julie was exhibited as part of the Salon Art Prize 2010 and selected from a shortlist of 65 artists for the Selectors’ prize, supported by John Jones.

Julie Cockburn lives and works in London. She studied at Chelsea College of Art and Central St Martins College of Art and Design. She has exhibited extensively in the UK, Europe and the United States. Her work is included in the collections of Yale Center for British Art, The Wellcome Collection, British Land and Goss-Michael Foundation as well as numerous private collections.

Matt Roberts Arts is a dynamic not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 to create opportunities for artists in new locations and contexts. Matt Roberts Arts offers support and opportunities to creative practitioners by providing a range of professional development programmes and national and international touring exhibitions.

MATT ROBERTS ARTS

Unit 1, 25 Vyner Street

London E2 9DG

MATT ROBERTS ARTS

Julie Cockburn

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