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Kenny Schachter
ROVE |
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Through a Glass, Darkly
Sonia Almeida
Annabel Emson
Nick
Goss
Elinor Evans
Matthew Murphy
Thorbjorn
Andersen
Gereon Krebber
Maria Glyka
Vassilis
Vlastaras
Carali McCall
Curated by
Annabel Emson &
DaeWha Kang
26 Apr - 24 May 2008
Kenny Schachter ROVE is
pleased to present Through a Glass, Darkly an
exhibition of 10 contemporary artists curated by
Annabel Emson and DaeWha
Kang.
'
from darkness we see light
from the hidden we uncover the
revealed
from obscurity we discern clarity'.
Architecture is a binding force. It is an
organizing element, and it makes an atmosphere. In this show,
the mediums of architecture and artwork are alchemically
combined, transforming the perception of space, reflection,
shadow and light from the boundaries of two and
three-dimensional fields into a living environment. The
gallery becomes a glass or a lens through which the art is
seen anew.
The
other world of a reflected side can be seen through distant
memories in Sonia Almeida's work. Almeida's
paintings shout back in time, listening for the echo that
appears on the canvas; distilling the essential, and leaving
the memory of a color or a shape from somewhere else. This
somewhere else, this window into another space, is evident in
a number of the artists' pieces. Annabel
Emson's 'Dark Light' opens up an atmosphere of a
place where the relationships of the paradoxical reflect off
each other; the light is seen through the darkness. A dark
painting becomes a light painting through the essence of its
darkness. In Nick Goss' landscapes, obscured
light reveals buildings, traces of human civilization left on
the edge. These places belong to another time and are now
remnants, artifacts of solitude. Elinor
Evans' paintings play with this element of
self-reflection. Humans wear or hide behind animal masks;
addressing the space between animalistic nature and the faces
worn in society. Through the fluid texture of moving image
Evans creates a dialogue between the face shown and the true
face: in essence our reflection. The artist challenges the
viewer to address their own nature through their relationship
to animals, their primeval nature and honesty to the shamanic
culture within. Taken on from here Matthew
Murphy's paintings and watercolors explore the realm
and boundaries of not only the mind but also the physical
anatomy; Murphy transforms the space of the body. The space of
an eye looking on is reflected back onto the viewer, the
looker becomes the looked at. Anatomy converges and transcends
into shapes and spaces outside the realm of scale or structure
of the usual architecture of a body, into another realm.
In
this realm of the reconstructed there exists a new space that
can be seen through the paintings and works of
Thorbjorn Andersen. Paintings become
abstract, geometrical, two-dimensional sculptures
simultaneously dense and transparent. The space in these
paintings reflect light through darkness, the edges of the
work conceptually extend out into the geometric space of the
architecturally rendered gallery, where the essence of light
and darkness are used to create space and structure. As the
artwork and gallery reflect through, over, and under each
other, obstructing and facilitating each other, the viewer is
confronted with the work of Gereon Krebber.
Krebber's obstructions and protrusions mould themselves around
the gallery making difficult space. The sculptures create
problems: through their awkwardness they create a platform of
awareness. A perception where the space is realized from the
problem, the viewer becomes aware of this big thing or this
floating object, or this jellied floor. The problems posed by
the sculptures allow the viewer to see that space in the floor
or that corner of the wall in a new light: to get around it,
to move past it, to understand how it got there. The
sculptures reflect back onto the looker the negative space of
the 'thing', which has obstructed itself into the gallery.
Cutting away blind acceptance the space is seen clearly
through the lens of these sculptures.
Tugged away from this rugged awareness the
viewer is folded and unfolded into the ephemeral materials of
Maria Glyka, optical echoes of previously
rendered scenes: that which is hidden, secretly opened,
revealed and folded back in on itself. Vassilis
Vlastaras and Maria Glyka collaborate across an
'architectural' bridge dialoguing between the hidden and the
seen, the obscured and the revealed, the domestic and the
social context of perception. A dialogue between spaces,
between rooms, between each other, they create. In
Carali McCall's work the body is the
sculpture through which the work is performed.. The artist as
sculpture; process being the image, and one that never ends
but by the exhaustion of endurance. The image is finished not
by the edge of a canvas but by the edge of a human's ability
to continue in time. As one looks into these circles one see
through them into a realm where time is the material and the
body the vessel of a movement--a raw energy--a light that
eventually returns to darkness and a darkness that gives birth
to light.
'Through a glass, darkly' carries its audience
along an obscured line reflecting through paradoxes,
stretching from the artist's body to the external limits of
the walls of the gallery. The space as atmosphere, a looking
glass into other worlds within worlds
Image:
Annabel Emson
Dark Light
oil
on canvas
200 x 240cm
2007
Courtesy of the artist and Kenny
Schachter ROVE
Kenny Schachter ROVE
Lincoln House
33-34 Hoxton Square
London N1 6NN
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Monika Sprüth
Philomene Magers Cologne |
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Robert Elfgen
"des bien ich"
16 Apr - 26 July 2008
Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are
delighted to present the first solo exhibition of
Robert Elfgen at their gallery in Cologne.
After his studies at the Academy of Arts in Braunschweig
(class of John Armleder) and at the Academy of Arts in
Düsseldorf (class of Rosemarie Trockel), the artist realized
solo exhibitions in Cologne (Simultanhalle), London
(Westlondonprojects) and in Munich (Sprüth Magers Projects) as
well as projects in public spaces. Robert Elfgen received the
Peter-Mertes-Stipendium of the Bonner Kunstfonds, the studio
scholarship of the Bonner Kunstverein and the award of the
federal state NRW for young artists. Robert Elfgen lives and
works in Cologne.
"If the bee disappeared from the face of the earth,
mankind would survive four more years; no bees, no
pollination, no animals, no humans.."
Albert Einstein describes the ostensibly innocuous role
that the small insect plays in our ecosystem as a defining
paradigm of our existence. Robert Elfgen's solo show in
Cologne "des bien ich" ("this is me, bee") follows this thread
and presents the "Bien" ("bee"/"to be") as a metaphor for the
relentlessly recurring questions of being.
The central piece of the exhibition is the "Bienenmann"
("the bee-man"): Dressed in a bee keeper's suit and shoes he
sits upright against the gallery wall, while an old beehive
covers his head. Two large format tarsia works on either side
of him show two facing and mutually mirroring greyhounds posed
as guards. Two owls and two rabbits complete the symmetrical
composition. The effect refers the objects to each other as
well as to themselves: like two facing mirrors they reveal an
abysmal infinity in an articulation of the beginning and end
of all things.
The gallery's walls are populated by bees. Variations of
different bee swarm formations modulate the surfaces of
changing images with colours that alternate in accordance with
the light. The visually seductive effect of these various
color-ways and the geometric structure seem to lend a third
dimension to the two-dimensional works. Like a window
unraveling a new perspective, an abstract landscape takes
shape which references the schematic perception of bees.
The illusion of unlimited space is further enhanced by
the installation of abstracted beehives that are hung at
different heights from the gallery ceiling. White plastic
barrels on the floor and alternating color surfaces simulate
leaking paint. Emotionally charged titles turn the splurges
into the feelings and affections that have defined life ever
since.
The abstraction of the bee-world leads to substantial
questions that not only drive the motor of creative processes
in the fine arts but epitomize the omnipresent striving for
perfection and harmony. As progressive and far developed as
our world seems today, the perfection of a bee colony and of
nature remains unachieved. The "Bien" describes a colony of
hundreds of insects as one unit, whose general functionality
compares to the organism of a mammal. The title "des bien ich"
prompts the viewer to consider the bigger contexts of our
contrived world back to the microcosm of the sum and the swarm
of aspects of our existence. "des bien ich" - what exactly?
And how many?
Image:
Robert Elfgen
Schwarm, 2008
Medium
density fiberboard, lacquer, glass
60 x 160 cm
Courtesy of Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers
Cologne
Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers
Wormser Straße
23
D-50677 Cologne
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David Risley Gallery,
London |
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Charlie Woolley
i built my house on
sand
18 Apr - 25 May 2008
David Risley Gallery is proud to present
the first solo exhibition by London born artist
Charlie Woolley.
In this exhibition Woolley brings together a collection
of images and objects with thematic connections. He asks the
question 'what can be done with the images that we are
confronted by everyday?' Sometimes this question is in
response to simple desires: to chart the histories of the
instruments and memorabilia of musicians ranging from bands
such as Black Flag to convict blues musician Robert Pete
Williams. At other times it is in response to the flickering
screens of television sets. Here they are frozen into
photographs, exposing moments of beauty and technological
anomaly as colour explodes through the expanded pixels of
black & white film stills. In other works the TV's surface
sends brightly coloured images into swirls of moiré distorting
and disturbing the image and one's vision.
This question also extends to images that do not confront
us so obviously, but instead are partially hidden and must be
sought out. A love letter is blown out of all proportion; the
handwriting replaced with a typeface bereft of sentiment, and
with the essential words replaced by a blank space hinting at
what might have been said.
A series of landscapes depicting solitary buildings are
blown-up low quality digital files found on an internet search
engine, the buildings themselves have been removed exposing a
second image underneath, which retains the shape of the thing
that is no-longer there. These images are inspired by
architectural palimpsests, a phenomenon so common in London, a
city ever haunted by more and more ghosts.
I Built my House on Sand is an exhibition in which
nothing is stable. The house was not built on sand through
foolishness or by accident, but with the knowledge that we
must always be prepared to let what we have go, and start
again.
Image:
Charlie Woolley
Installation at David
Risley Gallery, April 2008
Courtesy of David Risley Gallery, London
David Risley Gallery
45 Vyner
Street
London E2 9DQ
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AEROPLASTICS contemporary,
Brussels |
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Samuel Rousseau
19 Apr - 31 May 2008
From 19 April until 31 May 2008, AEROPLASTICS
Contemporary presents the recent works of
Samuel ROUSSEAU (1970), a French multi- media
artist living and working in Grenoble, capital of the French
Alps.
Through his new multimedia installation "La Constellation
des Baisers" (Constellation of Kisses - 2008), the artist
pursues his exploration of human pleasure, it"s digital
expression and the poetic feeling it may generate: thousands
of projected kisses fly around, thanks to beamers and mirrors,
and invite the viewer to be part of it. The "Festin des
DÈlices" ( Feast of Delights - 2006) or some of his Video
Wallpapers are the origin of this installation.
With the "Montagnes d'incertitudes" (Mountains of
Uncertainty - 2007) and installation "Sans Titre" (l'Arbre et
son Ombre) (Untitled- the Tree and its shadow - 2008), the
artist takes us back to the immutable cycle of nature, that
relives through virtual image. Rousseau makes digital art seem
warm , fertile, reassuring, generous.
His installation "Jardins Nomades" (Nomadic Gardens -
2007) and his series of photographs "Douceurs marocaines"
(Moroccan Pleasures - 2006) evoke migration or travel with a
poetry and aesthetic that barely hides the sombre truth behind
it: drugs and forced economic displacement.
Finally, the magnificent video "Maternaprima" depicting
something moving inside planet earth, brings us back to the
essential: the individual and the universe, the genesis and
the end. A glance from the micro to the macrocosm, like in his
"Casei" (2007); Photographs of planets ? Or perhaps cellular
organisms ? Or simply of cheeses ?
The set of works shown in this exhibition indicates a
search to master time and space so as to question, with humour
and sympathy, the human perception of the often deleterious
daily life. Even if Rousseau does not claim any "definite
processes" and enjoys surprising himself, some key ideas
support his non- stop creativity. As Ariadne's clew, the
necessity to survive and the recycling of scrap and abandoned
material.
Image:
Samuel Rousseau
Installation at
AEROPLASTICS contemporary
Brussels, April 2008
Courtesy of AEROPLASTICS contemporary, Brussels
AEROPLASTICS contemporary
32 rue
Blanche
Brussels 1060
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ZieherSmith, New
York |
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Karin Weiner
Plan B
17 Apr - 27 May 2008
In Karin Weiner's new exhibition, her
humorous vocabulary of survival and discovery spawns a
combination of large scale sculpture and works on paper. In
the latter, her signature collage elements are now attended to
by impositions of paint and ink. Weiner shifts between animal
and human narratives, as parallels unfold wherein the natural
world mimics our daily antics and vice versa. Humans grow
roots and houses sprout rainbows, while animals smoke
cigarettes. In her universe of hordes and hoarding, the world
seems to be inundated with itself but is never devoid of
visual surprise and pleasure.
The artist, recently removed from the urban bustle of New
York City to the quiet of a rural Vermont studio, created the
works while holed up against the forces of weather and
informed by the constant radio static of dramatic world events
far removed. In one installation, a tottering island is
littered by ridiculous dwellings clinging for dear life to
precarious crystal cliffs. Created from the accumulations of
imagery and actual material of past bodies of artwork, the
sculpture's massive presence, drenched in an oily sheen, is
uplifted by a halo of spouting rainbows. It has a range of
implications from the artistic growth process to a universal
desire for joy and rescue from a hazardous, morally ambiguous
world.
In the main gallery, a full-size lifeboat lays run
aground. Cobbled together from found wood and designed as a
home for a single survivor, the piece has personal as well as
political ramifications. In the artist's own words:
When I was a kid, we would spend the summers with my
father in Maine. We lived on his boat and were left alone at a
very young age to mind ourselves while Dad went to work. It
sounds criminal today, but to us it proved our father's trust.
In addition, we developed this incredible sense of freedom and
adventure. We had a small dingy that we would row out into the
middle of the bay day or night. In complete darkness, we would
be amazed with the stars and the phosphorescence in the water
that sent up an eerie glow when stirred by the oars. We would
float around for hours, oblivious to danger and fear which
should have been very real, before attempting to navigate our
way back to harbor by way of the few lights on the houses.
Therefore, boats have always been symbolic vessels for me.
They embody something mysterious and wonderful from my
childhood and even that incongruous sense of security remains
appealing..
This ship is the artist's escape pod in an upended world
and represents the notion that in the end, one is left with
oneself. The vessel is also about her own personal salvation
as much as her hopes for the future.
Karin Weiner has exhibited widely with recent solo
exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland as
well as group shows in Boston, New York, and Vienna. This
summer, she will be artist in residence at Belmont Mill in
County Offaly, Ireland. This is her third solo show at
ZieherSmith.
Image:
Karin Weiner
Plan B, 2008
mixed media
installation
Courtesy of ZieherSmith, New York
ZieherSmith
533 West 25th
Street
New York, 10001
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