Mat Collishaw. the Grinders Crease. Blain Southern. Berlin. Jan 2019

Press Release: Blain|Southern is delighted to present The Grinders Cease, an exhibition by Mat Collishaw, his first with the gallery in Berlin. The exhibition testifies to the depth and breadth of Collishaw’s practice, with new and recent works including installation, sculpture, photography and painting.

Collishaw is a key figure in an generation of contemporary British artists who came to prominence via the group show Freeze in 1988. He has never shied away from challenging subject matter, exploring ideas around death, destruction and decay. The artist is known for works that reference art history and create a contemporary dialogue with past masters.

The Grinders Cease reflects his preoccupation with the vanitas theme, used since the Renaissance as a way of reminding viewers of the impermanence of worldly pleasures.The exhibition title is borrowed from the King James Bible, Book of Ecclesiastes, from which the Vanitas derives. The exhibition opens with a new work from 2018, Columbine, which animates Albrecht Dürer’s watercolour study Columbine from 1526. This wild plant is a multifaceted example of the transience of life, both in that it blooms only briefly and because the plant itself is poisonous. 

 

The exhibition continues through three separate light-locked spaces. In the first, Albion takes as its subject the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, England. This centuries-old mythical tree has a hollow rotten trunk, and since the Victorian era its vast limbs have been supported by an elaborate system of scaffolding. Collishaw’s slowly rotating, almost life-size image of the oak is a ghost-like apparition generated by both cutting-edge laser scans and an antiquated technique of theatrical projection. Empty at its core, the image represents a living object which is trapped in perpetuity to present the illusion of life. The title also partly derives from

the idealised concept of an ancient England that probably never existed.

Last Meal on Death Row, Texas is a series of photographs of meals requested by actual prisoners prior to execution. Presented in the manner of Flemish still life paintings they are a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the impermanence of life on earth. Another series, the Black Mirror works, have another effect on the viewer: capturing single figures whose forms have been subtly animated to move behind a surveillance mirror framed in elaborate black Murano glass, the works reflect the viewer’s image and thus draw a connection between the past and present.

The grand finale is provided by Seria Ludo, a 3D zoetrope sculpture. This kinetic optical illusion rotates at increasing velocity before strobe lights kick in and animate the scene, revealing a frenzied chaos of debauchery. 180 tiny figures can be seen carousing across the framework of the chandelier in a manic, drunken orgy. This is a party, but a desperate one, and when will it stop?

 blain southern

Sislej Xhafa - shadow of curls. Blain Southern, Berlin.

Press Release:
Blain|Southern presents shadow of curls, Sislej Xhafa’s first exhibition in Berlin. 
At the core of Xhafa’s practice are the identity politics that surround the legal status of his country of origin, Kosovo, as well as broader ideas of power, politics, immigration and social and economic mobility. Many of these themes are explored in his pavilion this year at the 57th Venice Biennale, representing the Republic of Kosovo.
In shadow of curls, Xhafa works with a variety of materials associated with different types of migration, as well as a range of quotidian objects that have been re-appropriated, altered or rendered useless. Employing a conceptual mode, he draws upon the history of the readymade to ironic, humorous and subversive effect.
 
At first glance, an olive tree next to the entrance looks out of place amid artworks. Yet attached to it’s trunk, a tag reads ‘dont touch me’, drawing on ideas of ownership and privacy, while alluding to the history of the olive tree as a symbol of peace, or the tree as witness to history. 
In the corner of the space sits a large checked plastic bag, an object so common that it is almost synonymous with human movement. The open bag partially reveals a crystal chandelier, hinting at the hope of a new life, or perhaps a sense of suffocation. 
Hanging alongside one another, slightly away from the wall, are large canvases painted uniformly white and each partially covered in clear polythene. Closer inspection reveals barbed wire on the wall, a menacing barrier to another space mostly concealed by the pristine paintings. For Xhafa, the clean, perfect surface masks a darker, grim reality.
In contrast, a monochromatic black painting hangs opposite. The matt surface subtly broken by the word ‘Chicago’ painted in black gloss onto the canvas, which has been tipped on its side. This almost illegible reference is an example of the visual poetry common in Xhafa’s work. Avoiding direct metaphor, the work references multi-layered definitions of violence. 
Xhafa’s readymades are household objects, a garden hose, a refrigerator, garbage bags, mattress and a sun shade; his use of concrete has equally domestic connotations of home building, permanence and belonging, yet paradoxically of entrapment and brutal economics. 
shadow of curls creates a space where familiar objects are transformed into charged, ambiguous artworks, inviting visitors to participate in conversations about specific moments in history or current affairs, or universal questions about human freedom.

Sislej Xhafa. shadow of curls. Blain Southern, Berlin.

Sislej Xhafa. dear one. (convex acrylic mirrors, resin, cement).

Sislej Xhafa. still life on left lane (Plastic bag, crystal chandelier).

Sislej Xhafa. raw breeze -detail. (Acrylic on canvas, polythene, barbed wire).

Sislej Xhafa. raw breeze -detail. (Acrylic on canvas, polythene, barbed wire).

Sislej Xhafa. desert in hole (refrigerator).

Sislej Xhafa. dancing in the dark.

Sislej Xhafa. dry shade (wooden umbrella, resin, cement).

Sislej Xhafa. the bindery (Garbage bags, human hair).

Sislej Xhafa. stinging pocket (single mattress, cacti).

Sislej Xhafa. stinging pocket (single mattress, cacti).

Sislej Xhafa. shouting in the wind (3 lighters).

 11 November – 23 December 2017. Blain Southern.