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Galerie Anita Beckers: Simon Pasieka | Kota Ezawa | Philipp Grammaticopoulos | Yves Netzhammer - 30 May 2008 to 28 June 2008 Current Exhibition |
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Simon Pasieka
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Simon Pasieka - � 8 � Opening reception: Friday, May 30th from 7.30 pm Duration of the exhibition: May 30th - June 28th, 2008 We are very pleased to present new oil painting by the artist Simon Pasieka who therewith expands his work which up to now was mainly constituted by ink drawings. The image as if a mirror, reflected in the water or by looking into one, has always been popular in displaying modes of knowledge or the recognition of the self in painting. As described by Jacques Lacan in his theory of the mirror stage the identification of the self is only provided by the first look into the mirror; the idea about the self therewith is based on an image, on an imagination, moreover on a imagination of one's self as a unit of the body which will only develop in the course of life though. As a child or a young person, we are still far from this unit; our image in the mirror is only the first stage to practice the layouts of our self in order to finally arrive to a more global picture. The game and the theatre are the spaces of the imaginary in which the young protagonists in Simon Pasieka�s paintings move. Before colourless walls in barren winter landscapes they find themselves joined together in the game of masquerade, their mirror images bringing for a brief moment the bizarre formation of a new physical unit. Like in many of his ink drawings the artist shows small groups � absent and deeply committed to their game � in an original and natural environment. Whether playing with the mirror as in "8" or the two Aztec-styled young people demonstrating for their viewers as in the work "Wirbel / Vortex", they always seem complacently recognise themselves in their own game while concurrently be willing to exclude themselves from to the outside world. In addition to his ink drawings Pasieka uses the oil to manage through the bright colours of his character�s clothing and utensils an additional distance between them and their natural environment. At the same time he lets them mark their territory, in whose limited space both game and transformation can happen. Tasja Langenbach Kota Ezawa / Philipp Grammaticopoulos / Yves Netzhammer - Animation in Videoart Using the computer as a painterly tool to create 3-D imaginary structures in the data space, Kota Ezawa, Philippe Grammaticopoulos and Yves Netzhammer explore our perception of the world and the possibilities of representing it today. They offer us a virtual and fictional world for all kinds of encounters and provide us with an exemplary reflection about today�s informational world we live in. Run by its specific laws, Yves Netzhammer's compelling yet constantly changing mental landscapes show multifaceted recurrent metaphors � black birds, dark shadows, spurting blood, flying balls i.e. - which result both strange and fascinating and unbalance our own sense of familiarity with things. Posing questions into human memory and exploiting themes as illness, love, sexuality and death � abstractions themselves � Yves Netzhammer establishes a new kind of �picture language�. Yves Netzhammer succeeds thus, in linking questions originally connected with new technological developments together with an insight to psychological and cultural historical content. Also exploring the ways we use history and its constructions, the San Francisco-based artist Kota Ezawa describes his own practice as a form of �video archaeology�. Using iconic archival news or film footage, Ezawa addresses how we only remember the past through mediated images � from television, newspapers, cinema i.e.- and the dangers which entail from it. The same way as a moving Warhol silkscreen or a South Park cartoon, Kota Ezawa�s video animations employ few colours and details to inquire the power and overlap of popular culture, political action and high art. As a sort of digital approximation of paper-cutout animation, vibrantly coloured and stylized, his flat images are patiently recreated by hand � a single video can take up to a year to be finished � and finally presented to the viewer as a digital projection or a film, or a slide show. Ultimately, such laboriously technique is questioning how � in a culture charged with technologically mediated images - certain images prevail in our collective memory more than others and how rapidly they are replaced. In �Le Regulateur�, Philippe Grammaticopoulos, who was born in 1970 and studied at the renowned academy for animation film Supinfocom in Valenciennes, places his characters in an architectural scenery animated in black-and-white. In search of the perfect child, a well-to-do couple visits a reproduction factory to have their offspring built together like on the assembly line. Citing a classical temple structure in the architecture, Grammaticopoulos reflects on current debates on the future limits and possibilities of reproduction. Kota Ezawa, Philippe Grammaticopoulos and Yves Netzhammer seem to share the same attraction to animation exactly because of its �constructed� nature. They eagerly explore their tools, consciously leaving some aspects hidden in order to bring out more decisive ones, leaving only the most basic indexical values in the end. Playing with recognisability and fictionality, their choices are not innocent nor without consequences� Liliana Rodriguez |
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