Chris Dennis Art: kunst

Showing posts with label kunst. Show all posts

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Martian Dreams Ensemble. GFZK Leipzig

Martian Dreams Ensemble transports us to Mars and back via dreams, projections and desires. By means of music as well as using spatial and graphic approaches, the Ensemble plays with the possibilities of the exhibition format. The ensemble comprises the graphic artist Marie Proyart, the musician Julien Perez, the diorama designer Joi Bittle and the architect Martial Galfione. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster brings them all together – in the exhibition, in the concert and in the space.
If one views the exhibition as the sum of various thoughts and questions, Martian Dreams Ensemble is concerned with the following: dreams of people, dreams of Martians and Martian culture, dreams of the future and the past of the planet Mars for us as human beings. As is the case in many of her other works, the artist’s interest in Mars is inspired by works of literature. Here she refers explicitly to Ray Bradbury‘s “The Martian Chronicles” and “The Illustrated Man”, or Leigh Brackett’s romantic descriptions of Mars. Both are not without criticism of mankind and policies of occupying foreign territory, implying the possibility of destruction and exploitation.
The exploration of the world of science fiction has accompanied the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for almost 20 years. It began in 2001 in Dijon with Cosmodrome and Quelle architecture pour Mars? TH.2058 at the Tate Modern in London marked a shift in focus towards dystopias – as did Ballard Garden in Antwerp and Pynchon Park at the MAAT in Lisbon, which allowed human behaviour to be observed under ideal conditions. “The exhibition as a means that unites all parameters – work, title, lighting, sound, audience and time – is central to my artistic work. I have always been more interested in immersive artworks than in autonomous objects.” (DGF)
On spring 2019, a concert featuring Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Julien Perez will be held at the Niemeyer Sphere in Leipzig. Two new songs by EXOTOURISME will be released by The Vinyl Factory (London) in December 2018, in cooperation with TEXTE ZUR KUNST and the GfZK.

October 13, 2018 until February 17, 2019

curated:Julia Schäfer

curatorial assistance: Yi Gao

diorama: Joi Bittle

architecture: Martial Galfione

sound: Julien Perez

graphic design: Marie Proyart

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

John Kleckner. Years Disappear. Galerie Judin. Berlin.

Vernissage July 2nd, 2017.

John Kleckner. Years Disappear.

Press Release: Two years ago, American artist John Kleckner, born in Iowa in 1978, took up painting again. After working almost exclusively with ink, watercolor and pencil on paper for several years, he created a dozen large-format paintings, which will be on view for the first time in our exhibition. This change of technique has also prompted a change of style: the organic shapes and naturalistic subjects of his works on paper have given way to geometric structures, injecting an entirely new tension into his compositions. Now we find bars of carefully wrought plasticity, intricately assembled arrows and, in matt silver shimmer, serpentine convolutions as well as many zones of color. But how do these elements relate within the picture? Patches of quirkily mutating pigment and strangely falling shadows pose a riddle to the viewer: are they two-dimensional shapes that overlap, or are they three-dimensional arrangements of objects?

Kleckner’s works do not reveal the artist’s intention immediately. And however hard we try, almost none of his compositions can be nailed down in figurative terms. But our attempts to grasp and analyse his paintings yield a different insight: if at first the collaged compositions and color variations suggest random compilations of heterogeneous components, closer scrutiny soon reveals that there is more to this than stand-alone arrangements. Again and again, similar forms and hues emerge, sometimes prominently placed, sometimes cunningly concealed. They belong to a surprisingly consistent formal repertoire that Kleckner has developed over the last three years and exploited in various ways for his series of paintings. With this spectrum of elements, Kleckner’s style is treading new territory, lending an unsuspected momentum to his work. Many motifs seem to hark back to past visual worlds, notably from the 1960s to the 1990s—surely no coincidence for an artist who has declared the German term “Stilbruch” (breach of style) to be one of his favourite words.

Kleckner’s new repertoire of form is based on an on-going series of paper collages that he started making in 2012. They contain fragments from significant references to art history, photos, graphic designs, snippets of global pop culture and much more besides. Many of these collages have never been translated into a painting, while others have been processed several times over with variations. But Kleckner does not cling slavishly to his own templates. Ultimately, the colors and shapes are always varied. Thus every painting is liberated from its precursor, and by the end of the process two solitaires have been created. Kleckner refers to them as “carefully planned accidents”.

In the collages themselves there are no text elements to be found—at least, almost none. For although Kleckner himself dispenses with cut-out letters, each collage bears an enigmatic title printed at the bottom of the page: a number followed by a lengthy dash, followed in turn by two or three blanks, a question mark and ending with a year. The pages with these enigmatic titles were taken from the exhibition catalogue for Joseph Beuys’ The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland. Beuys attributed these combinations to the 296 works in his Block of 456 drawings, which had no specific titles of their own. The number in front is the running inventory number and changes accordingly. Kleckner could not resist this blend of both the “impenetrable and mysterious” and the “pseudo-scientific and specific”. It allowed him to appropriate and apply a systematic framework for his own Block, which he eventually called Questions for a Secret Person in Iowa.

Kleckner’s first encounter with the work of the legendary German action artist and inventor of the Social Sculpture was a determining moment in his artistic development. As a student he came across two small volumes about Beuys’ early drawings that shook his views of art—and what it could and should do—to the core. In the next few years, the idea that reproductions, like those of Beuys’ works, might function as a springboard for his own original work began to take shape. Now Kleckner’s creations have been reproduced in his first monographic exhibition catalogue—and they in turn can serve other artists as a basis for originals of their own. It is potentially a chain reaction, and Kleckner certainly sees the funny side of it.

Galerie Judin.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Huntenkunst 2017 - Photos.

Pictures from the 25th edition of Huntenkunst, held on the 19th, 20th and 21st of May at the SPP Hall in Ulft.
(If I am missing or have incorrect credits please let me know).