HILARY BERSETH, TIM DAVIS, MARC HANDELMAN, DANIEL LEFCOURT, MEGAN MC LARNEY, CARTER MULL, MARIAH ROBERTSON, and HEATHER ROWE.
Hilary Berseth�s �Programmed Hives� use the natural building process of bees to generate sculptural forms. Berseth uses a number of strategies for organizing the way bees build: seeding the hive with a foreign geometry, compressing the available space to generate a particular form, or adding an impediment to the structure the bees would ordinarily create. Berseth�s interventions in the bee colonies act as �programs� that instigate a set of forms between the organic and the artificial.
Tim Davis�s photographic work �The Horrorists� juxtaposes two images: a detail of Christ�s wounds from a di Ribera painting resembles a smiling mouth, reminding us of the theological relationship between ecstasy and suffering, while a portrait of the artist wearing a grim expression on a rollercoaster (in contrast with the gleeful screams of his fellow riders) eloquently describes the way in which fear is packaged as a consumer product.
Marc Handelman�s �Painting for the End of Northrop Grumman� takes a fragment of text from the aerospace/defense contractor�s logo as a readymade, then heightens the intended effects of scale, speed and drama to the point where those qualities teeter on the brink of absurdity. Handelman underscores the role of abstraction in the construction of the corporate identity, simultaneously foregrounding and corrupting the spectacular fa�ade that would ordinarily serve to obscure the reality of what the company deals in.
Daniel Lefcourt�s work plays with the instability of meaning. In his multi-part inkjet print on board, this instability is both literally depicted and aesthetically enacted. The piece features images of collapsing architecture and billowing clouds of smoke. These images, however, are not the stuff of Hollywood movies, nor are they dispatches from the �war on terror�. Instead, they are a collection of found images from the recent demolition of the Kodak photographic paper processing plant, a symbol of the shift from the solidity of analog technology to the mutability of the digital.
Megan Mc Larney�s photographs and videos of the natural world are constructed by combining numerous smaller images into a single large composite. This process allows her both to shoot with a small camera and to render her subjects in greater detail than would otherwise be possible. The resulting images are apparently documentary, ambient and made in real time, while in fact they are compressed and collaged from different moments and perspectives.
Carter Mull�s �Ground� is a floor sculpture composed of 1800 uniquely painted photographs, taken sequentially during the process of the artist�s destroying an institutional drop ceiling. The photographs, made from �office jet� prints and a reflective film whose color properties shift as the viewer changes position, are scattered across the floor of the gallery, collapsing the linearity of the sequence. Mull�s �Construction�, a small black-and-white contact print made onto silver metallic paper, builds a composition out of the simple doubling and reorientation of two images, one a landscape, the other a diagram of plant growth.
Mariah Robertson�s three photographs are made using traditional amateur effects filters. The action of the filter on the lens, the particular way it abstracts the quotidian subject matter, is immediately obvious to the viewer. Simultaneously lush and barren, psychedelic and hungover, the photographs are essentially portraits of the hobbyist-grade techniques employed in their making. Robertson will also give a presentation at the show�s opening on �Neuroplasticity and the Perception of Time and Space�.
Inspired by the monumental buttresses of Amiens Cathedral, Heather Rowe�s �Three Flying Buttresses for a Wall� are simplified and scaled down to a personalized height and contain intentional structural defects. Thin, delicate pieces of glass tenuously hold the pieces together, subverting the original structural function of the architectural elements.
KUNST HALLE SANKT GALLEN presents David Renggli - Scaramouche
17 August - 27 October 2013
David Renggli - in some respects a prodigy of the Swiss art scene - has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of the public for more than ten years thanks to a unique mixture of themes and forms, of spectacle, humour and poetry.
The Showroom, London presents Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london)
12 July - 17 August 2013
The Showroom is delighted to present re-projecting (london), a major new commission by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, and the first significant presentation of his internationally renowned artwork in the UK.
