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Espacio Minimo: ANNE BERNING - On Display - 15 Jan 2008 to 29 Feb 2008 Current Exhibition |
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S/T (display - pocket edition), 2007. T�cnica mixta. 123 x 122 cm.
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On display is the title of German artist ANNE BERNING�s second solo show at Espacio Minimo. Last summer we had the chance to see her Encyclopeadic Incompleteness at the CAC de Malaga, and now she surprises once again us with her personal vision of art history and, in particular, the history of painting. The Painted Concept was the title given to an enlightening text about ANNE BERNING by Nina Jaenisch, where she analyzes the production, reproduction, and reception of a work of art. Berning�s subject matter is the history of painting, and her relationship with that history. Her position is one of distancing, she does not attempt to imitate, nor aims to create an illusion or an appropriation. Her effort aim towards a documentary representation of her chosen subjects, be they exhibition catalogue covers, or postcards of famous paintings, or a bookshelf of filled with books about painting. This way of painting could be compared to the structuralist process. Sometimes the paintings subject � postcards, book spines, catalogues� � include texts � titles, artist names, artists signatures, �- as an additional explanation to clarify what is being painted. All the periods of art history are treated in ANNE BERNING�s work, establishing a relationship between different historical, chronological, stylistic or genre categories, creating a subtle, and sometimes ironic play of contrasts and associations. On the other hand, the enlargement of the painted object, the choice of detail, the textual and visual citations, or the use of a strictly rational (alphabetical) order in the placing of the books on the supposed shelf, touches upon the association processes that are activated in the spectator�s memory and upon their perspectives of perception. ANNE BERNING�s works consider the viewer�s point of view. Book spines against the wall, covers of painting exhibition catalogues on bookcase of spectacular proportions, postcards form paintings in museums or exhibitions, all these serve as model for her works. The paintings are not exhibited in a traditional way and the spectator begins to search for explanations for that. The answer is to be found in the gaze. They are all references towards a false reality which actually does not exist for behind its appearance of reality. What the artist is portraying does not exist. Apart from a few of the objects, most of them are invented. As Joachin J�ger writes in The ABC of Painting. Anne Berning and the History of Art within the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition ain the CAC de Malaga: The sophistication of Anne Berning�s work lies in bravely and impressively mastering the tightrope between fiction and reality. The spines of the books are so well devised and at the same time, so convincing. Whether it is the master Gr�newald in old German characters, Mondrian or Memling in distinctive capital letters or a stroke for Ronald B. Kitaj - they are almost always painted in a manner so close to the formation of existing books, that one surely believes themselves to have seen this or that book before. |
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