|
Galerie Eva Presenhuber: MARTIN BOYCE | STEVEN SHEARER - 5 June 2010 to 31 July 2010 Current Exhibition |
||||
|
MARTIN BOYCE
Installation view, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, 2010 |
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
MARTIN BOYCE With the solo exhibition A Library of Leaves, Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to show new works by Scottish artist Martin Boyce. When Martin Boyce first came across a black-and-white photograph of concrete sculptures made by Joel and Jan Martel (Paris, 1925) modeled after trees, it was impossible to predict the strong influence this would have on his future work. The graphically analyzed structure of the trees became a foundational module for far-reaching design interventions. For example, this module forms the foundation for an alphabet that Boyce developed. The letters of this alphabet surface in many of his works, marking them and defining them. They might simply be applied to the wall, so that the eye has to trace out, like leaves that constantly change their direction in the wind. But they might also be elements inscribed in sculptural works, hidden in their structure. In this way, Martin Boyce challenges the beholder to look ever more precisely. If little can be seen on first glance, on second glance words and contexts emerge. By way of the sequence from the primal tree, to the petrified tree, to apparently strict, angular letters, suddenly unexpected poetic quotations are encountered: �Out of this sun, into this shadow.� Martin Boyce has been fascinated for some time by the designers of the modern style and their furniture. Dismantled and reassembled, again and again, Martin Boyce works on select design icons, such as the �, to obtain new facets of their steadfast claims. In A Library of Leaves, these two fields of activity encounter one another symbiotically: towards this end, Martin Boyce has created two large format table works that derive from Jean Prouv�s designs for a library table for the Maison de l��tudiant in Paris. The original design is literally expanded in Martin Boyce�s works by adding a new, legible dimension. All structural elements, both the table legs as well as the lamp stands on the side, have been replaced by a central triangular shape of the basis of the module described above. The table slabs have entirely disappeared in their actual form. While on the one trestle there is now an incomplete and reassembled wood panel, the panel on the second has given way to an iron door, which repeatedly surfaces in Boyce�s work. For the two boards, the �concrete� tree was the inspiration, the patterns and letters that reanimate them come from its stone leaves. In a similar way, the new wall works of Martin Boyce reflect this reference: the panels, as if cast in concrete, clearly show the structure of the wood sheathing. These surfaces too come together to form a subtle play on words, whether or not these found elements are from literature or formulated by Martin Boyce himself. Parallel to the Martin Boyce exhibition, Galerie Eva Presenhuber shows new works by Canadian artist Steven Shearer. STEVEN SHEARER Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present new works by Candian artist Steven Shearer in the exhibition Geometric Healing. Steven Shearer�s works revolve around similar issues in constantly changing forms. His central interest here is a youth subculture committed to heavy metal, that had its start in the 1970s. In so doing, Shearer makes use of the products resulting from the mass movement, such as numerous fan goods, and engages at the same time with the private staging of the individual. With an almost archival ambition, Steven Shearer is constantly enlarging his private atlas of images., which he then removes from the immense mass of collective image multiplication. In a further step, Shearer responds and reacts to this collection on several media levels. Using the techniques of classical painting, drawing, simple photocopies, or computer-based image editing, the works all possess a great melancholic quality. In his new large format works, Shearer uses the classical canvas as a stage for his eternal heroes. The guitar in this series, as earlier as well, becomes a key object, worshipped in a cult-like fashion, and dominates the entire image structure. Freed from its original environment, object and player fuse before the monochromatic backgrounds to form an ideal typical unit. The shaped canvases suggestively follow the movement of the guitar neck and develop their very own dynamics. The large format sculptural work Improved Geometric Mechanotherapy Cell for Harmonic Alignment of Movements and Relations (2009) finds its origins in the already early depiction of a similar object. If the original version was supposedly intended as a toy�monkey bars for children�it is transformed in Shearer�s reinterpretation into a social utopian construct. Gleaming, the structure of countless black pipes stands compactly in the space and is rattled at irregular intervals by sonorous bass sounds. Like bowels, according to Steven Shearer, the structure can be imagined as a kind of reservoir for collective-negative energies that are digested inside the labyrinth and catalytically released. Parallel to the exhibition of work by Steven Shearer, Galerie Eva Presenhuber is showing new work by Scottish artist Martin Boyce. |
||||
re-title.com
International contemporary art
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTERS
SIGN UP for ARTIST MEMBERSHIP
SIGN UP for GALLERY MEMBERSHIP
Click on the map to search the directory