Saturday, April 25, 2015

Mark Staff Brandl - The Hood in miim Chopf. Vadian Bank, St. Gallen. April 23, 2015.

There was a packed house in the cellar of the Vadian Bank in St. Gallen, Switzerland for what I'm told will be the last exhibition they stage.
'The Hood in miim Chopf'  (The Neighborhood in My Head) by Mark Staff Brandl is a fitting finale. The show contains of 88 small works, hung in pairs, with a portrait alongside an object that best represents that person.
 A better explanation in the form of a press text and an annotated diagram follows the pics.
The shows runs until June 12th, which incidentally, is the night of my vernissage in St.Gallen.
Mark Staff Brandl - The Hood in miim Chopf. Vadian Bank
Mark Staff Brandl (white t shirt).
Mark Staff Brandl - The Hood in miim Chopf. Vadian Bank












"The 'Hood in miim Chopf
Mark Staff Brandl
My exhibition is titled "The 'Hood in miim Chopf." This is a combination of American English slang and Swissgerman dialect. In full English "The Neighborhood in My Head" and in Hochdeutsch, "Die Nachbarschaft in meinem Kopf." I show largely outside my living area nowadays. In the gallery that represents me in Zurich, Jedlitschka Gallery, or in Italy, New York, Chicago, elsewhere in Europe and so on. When I was asked to exhibit in the exhibition space of the Vadian bank, I had to think of something appropriate to being there. That is one of my joys as an artist, to work in what I call "Contextually Specific" ways. My work generally merges painting with installation, sign-painting and sequential art, often with a central conceptual framework that comes from the context of where it is being shown.
I decided that since the location was somewhat local, I would make it a celebration of the VERY local. I decided to do portraits of people who live near me in the village of Trogen, AR, people with whom I have regular contact. Thus neighbors. That is my "Viertel", or as we say it in the US, my " 'Hood." However, then I thought to expand it a bit, to bring it into our mobile present. I added to the group people who I see regularly, who I feel to be my neighbors, but who do not live directly near me. Thus, the neighborhood in my head, in my thoughts. These are people in Trogen, St. Gallen, the local artworld, Liechtenstein and more. Ones I talk to and think about.
Each portrait consists of two panels. The first is an image of their face in my style, in a variation I call "drawing-paintings" as they are somewhere between those two media. The second panel is of a thing they chose, or I chose for them, that represents them in some way. Die verschmelzen Einflüsse von Jackson Pollock, R.B. Kitaj, Jacopo Tintoretto, Schrift-Malereimeiner Vater Earl Brandl, und dem Comic/Sequenzielle-Kunst-Zeichner Gene Colan. Sie scheinen mit geschleuderten Tropfen von Schildmaler-Email-Farbe gestaltet zu sein. Aber die Striche und Linien verwandeln sich zu Repräsentationen ihrer selbst. I do visual philosophy in slang. In the Renaissance and Baroque arists would often paint objects that were synecdoches from the interests of the sitter. I always loved that, this is my version. In the Vernissage, you can ask the individuals what the objects are and why.
One more conceptual aspect. The paintings are for sale in pairs, as together they make up the portrait. However, the individual subject, those people who I represented have also the option of proposing a barter with me. A Gegengeschäft or Tauschhandel. Especially since most are not collectors: What they could do or the like for me in exchange for their portrait.
Welcome to an aspect of my world in the Ostschweiz. Thank you to Walter Ernst and the Vadian Bank, and all the people in the pictures for this possibility and allowing this strange trade.


Mark Staff Brandl (detail).

Mark Staff Brandl
MSB wiki
Vadian Bank

Friday, April 24, 2015

Marianne Rinderknecht. I'm So F_cking Perfect. Galerie Paul Hafner, St. Gallen.


Marianne Rinderknecht. I'm So Fucking Perfect. Galerie Paul Hafner

Marianne Rinderknecht. I'm So Fucking Perfect. Galerie Paul Hafner


detail
 

Marianne Rinderknecht. I'm So Fucking Perfect. Galerie Paul Hafner

14 March - 2 May 2015
galerie paul hafner
Marianne Rinderknecht.

Florian Graf: Chamber Music. Kunst Halle, Saint Gallen.


Press text: Florian Graf moves through the world very much like a flâneur who allows himself to drift in order to observe and reflect. His attention is particularly drawn to architectonic and social situations and their reciprocal interactions. The cosmopolitan artist with Appenzell roots is especially interested in how we install ourselves in our lives and the effect that spaces have upon us. Graf’s concern with the emotional, intellectual and psychological aspects of space is expressed in various media ranging from drawings, sculptures and films to interventions, installations and actions in public space.  
Florian Graf: Chamber Music. Kunst Halle, Saint Gallen.
 

Florian Graf: Chamber Music. Kunst Halle, Saint Gallen.

  In his exhibition «Chamber Music», composed specifically for the premises of Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Florian Graf examines the triad of public space, private space and natural space. These fields each occupy one of the three exhibition halls. The poetic image that Graf creates leads us to reflect on how public space is altering, how desires for private and intimate space are changing and how our relationship to landscape or to “nature” has become a new challenge. The starting point for these deliberations is the observation that the life forms of our global society oscillate between old, still influential social models and the anticipation of a precarious future unconnected to clear visions or utopias. In this context, living - “installing oneself in the world” - and thus space itself becomes a question. 
Graf reflects the essence and the effect of public, private and natural space with the help of three forms which appear in each of the exhibition halls in various materials and dimensions and which each take on various roles. In the first hall, public space, the three forms can best be described as architectonic elements: they are columns, gateway, building and sculpture at the same time and evoke the feeling of moving through a town. In the second hall, private (living) space, the three forms are purely decorative elements: as ceramic vases they brighten up the space and contribute to its cosiness. In the last hall, nature influenced by mankind or the artificial landscape, the forms reappear as sculptures with an ensemble of plinths in the form of a fountain reminiscent of a gravestone or as a flower trough. 
In the Sankt Gallen exhibition transformation – a recurrent theme in Florian Graf’s artistic work – is part of his reflection on the essence and the effect of spaces and refers particularly to the changing roles that we take on as users of public, private and natural space. With architectonic interventions, display variations and material translations he critically but humorously prompts a dialogue with influential models of life and society.

Florian Graf: Chamber Music. Kunst Halle, Saint Gallen.
 

Florian Graf (*1980 in Basel/CH) studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Fulbright Fellow), the Edinburgh College of Art (MFA with Distinction), The Royal Drawing School, London (Postgraduate Programme), the Watermill Center, International Summer Arts Program, New York, and at ETH Zurich (M. Sc. Architecture ETH, Awarded Degree). Today he lives and works in Basel. Solo exhibitions (selection): Krasnoyarsk Museum Center, Krasnojarsk (2014); Wettsteinplatz Basel during Art Basel (2013); Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen (2012); Curtat Tunnel, Lausanne; Abbatiale de Bellelay (2011). Group exhibitions (selection): Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel; Bex & Arts, Triennale de Sculpture, Bex; Kunst Raum Riehen; Bâtiment d'Art Contemporain (BAC), Geneva (2014); Kunsthalle Vogelmann, Städtisches Museum Heilbronn; Réunion, Zurich; Kunstmuseum Olten (2013); Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010); Edinburgh Art Festival (2009). 

Opening: Fri, 17 April 2015, 6 p.m.

Guided Tours: Tues, 21 April, 6 p.m.; Sun, 7 June, 3 p.m.

Introductory Evening for Teachers: Tues, 21 April, 6 p.m.

Art Snack: Wed, 20 May, 12.30 p.m.

Workshop for Families: Sun, 31 May, 2 p.m.

Drawing Afternoon for Children: Wed, 3 June, 2 p.m.

Art Lunch: Thurs, 11 June, 12 noon

Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen