FLOHMARKT, NACHT

from Ricardo Okaranza

October 17 – December 19, 2009

Vernissage: October 16th from 19h (7pm)

German version

WILDE Gallery is pleased to present Flohmarkt, Nacht - by Ricardo Okaranza, his first solo-show in Berlin. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with a critical essay by Wayne Baerwaldt, Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the ACAD, Calgary.

Ricardo Okaranza, FLOHMARKT, NACHT #06; 2009 pigmented ink on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag, 61 x 81 cm

Basque-born Okaranza's approach to photography is entirely abstract and consciously devoid of any implied narrative. His pictures are always taken at night and although they suggest representational figuration, unavoidable through a camera lens and its mechanical recording of the image, the subjects portrayed are always considered for their painterly formalism alone. Light sources become dots, architectural structures become lines, spaces become colour fields and so on. The objects that lay abandoned in these pictures relinquish their respective utility in Okaranza's compositions, becoming forms analogous in shape and colour, but stripped of personal reference.

Wayne Baerwaldt writes of Okaranza's deserted urban landscapes that, "His frequently brooding, puzzling vistas of sobriety are contained by a re€ned, classical symmetry, characteristic of Okaranza's approach to image-making, and, in their drive to invoke the painted image, are as purposeful a departure from 'straight photography' as one can imagine."

Ricardo Okaranza, LÖWENBRÜCKE, NOV 2007 #11; 2008 pigmented ink on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag, 45 x 61 cm

Historical antecedents of the analog photographic process are eradicated in the methodology employed by Okaranza's contemporary technique, in which images are directly transposed as ink pigment on rag. A radical interpretation of Okaranza and his particular pathology would be to consider him as a latter-day watercolourist wherein the lens and subsequent image manipulation has replaced the brush.

Okaranza's works are strange hybrids that emanate a quiet sense of beauty, imbued by a surreal, painterly vividness, in which ominous horizons replete in densely saturated tones slowly creep over sombre surfaces, where activity has ceased. Uncanny and often unsettling in their emptiness, these are scenes of nocturnal alchemy, when reflections of street lamps, diffused neon and other sources of artificial urban light distil a curious mysticism in the otherwise mundane and disregarded spaces that play silent witness to our lives.

Flohmarkt, Nacht is accompanied by a monograph catalogue, published by WILDE Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition. The electronic version of the catalogue can be downloaded by clicking here.

For more information or to obtain high-resolution images for print or press purposes, please contact Gallery Manager Emilie Trice at trice@wilde-gallery.de

Wilde Gallery would like to express their sincere gratitude towards:
ACAD, Calgary
Alberta Foundation for the Arts
Botschaft von Spanien (Spanish Embassy in Berlin)

Ricardo Okaranza, CALGARY NOCTURNES, LANES #START; 2009 pigmented ink on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag, 61 x 81 cm

vernissage
October 16th from 19h (7pm)

exhibition
October 17 – December 19, 2009

opening hours
Wed – Sat | 12 – 18 h

location
WILDE GALLERY
Chausseestrasse 7
D-10115 Berlin
info@wilde-gallery.com
www.wilde-gallery.com