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INVENTORY # 1 Said Baal, John Brown, CT’INK/Evol & Pisa73, Alexei Kostroma, Michael Luther, John Noestheden, Ricardo Okaranza, Stefan Saffer, Michael Stecky, Anna Straube, Balint Zsako, Johannes ZitsSeptember 27th – October 25th, 2008 Vernissage: Saturday, September 27th, from 7 pm --> zur deutschen Version
Held once a year, the INVENTORY # project becomes the file under which WILDE Gallery mounts investigative displays of its gallery artists. Each INVENTORY show sets out to explore the relationships created within its own community of artists and the dialogue between their works.
Said BAAL Berlin based Lebanese artist BAAL's work is concerned with the act of remembrance and investigates the relationships of displacement through the painterly medium. His pictures depict accumulations of debris in various compositions that re-enacts the idea of loss, subordination and power relationships. Personal belongings, piles of luggage, heaps of clothes emerge from BAAL's pictures as an embodiment of the anonymous refugee. A refugee that has lost everything, but where memory can offer not only salvage but also salvation.
John BROWN Canadian artist Brown's pictures are literally survivors of their own making. The artist negotiates between formalism and abstraction where everything is exchangeable in the processes of excavating the final picture from layers upon layers of reference. Lesser known for his "encounter" drawings, on view in the gallery, these emblems of longing unveil their narrative in a dry description of their creation. A rapidly drawn portrait subtitled, "Anonymous-Oral Sex-Anal Sex-Bathhouse", reveal the processes in which the artist come about the more celebrated paintings.
EVOL Having originally emerged as a street artist, EVOL's interests have focused on the overlooked and the refuse of urban society. Working with labour-intensive stencils, his imagery is traced onto salvaged wood or bits of cardboard, offering visual comments and thoughts that remind us of the failure of modernism and its visions of an architectural utopia. The artist works under the CT'INK label, which he shares with fellow artist PISA73.
Alexei KOSTROMA Russian born Berlin based artist Kostroma has set out Five conceptual limitations that he abides by. Eggs, The colour Yellow, Ducks, Numbers and Feathers. These seemingly arbitrary selections create a universe of its own and have offered the artist a platform onto which he has applied theories of material cognition, spectral refraction of light and ideas of chaos theory. The works manifest themselves as ensembles of interlocking and interdependent sources to the universal forces of creativity.
Michael LUTHER Michael Luther's painterly world is that of the minutely intimate. The main subjects for his pictures are found in his most nearby surroundings such as his studio or even more extreme close-up, from the actual source for making pictures, namely the paints and art materials themselves. His works literally feed upon themselves in a cycle of representation and re-representation. Recent works deal with the phenomenology of space and has taken a step towards the depiction of the institutional room.
John NOESTHEDEN
Ricardo OKARANZA Basque born Okaranza's approach to photography is entirely abstract and open ended. 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 formalism alone. Light sources become dots, shadows become lines and so on. Okaranza does not offer any pictorial narrative although the images may suggest so and if depicted so, it is entirely coincidental.
PISA73 Berlin based PISA73's artistic approach is sometimes blatantly derisive and his pictures are harsh but also radiate a sense of unintentional beauty. The artists' use of instant recognition becomes visible with iconic brands and repositioned advertisements that are processed to form new meaning. PISA73's works are a testament to a time of bloated romantic eclecticism, asking not what beauty is, but what beauty does - in the service of turbo capitalism, corporate manipulation, misuse of power and state control.
Stefan SAFFER Saffer's personal art practice varies from paper-cut outs to folded works from Objects and Mobiles to large installations. He recently worked on the idea to introduce Berthold Brecht's "Verfremdunsgeffekt", freely translated: (alienation effect) to fine arts. Saffer continuously tries to explore the possibilities of Improvisation in Art as a parallel experiment to Music and its use of it.
Michael STECKY Originally a composer, Stecky is carrying over his interests in the act of hearing to the act of seeing. His work in video and painting is concerned with the indexical mark and by pushing its' limits he investigates the boundaries of representation and authenticity and tries to find the point where it all collapses. Recent work is an interactive "art-therapy" website, which is a self-organising structure onto which viewers can compose their own treatments.
Anna STRAUBE Conditional portraiture and a descent into psychopathology marks the paintings of Anna Straube. Initially capturing her subjects via the camera lens, she embarks on a journey to reveal the inner beings of her sitters by re-applying their personae and offering them a new skin. The ferocity and ambiguity that emanate from Straube's paintings are only short of a complete exploding of the picture plane.
Balint ZSAKO New York based Zsako has created a pictorial world inhabited by a myriad of figures that display the cyclical nature of being. A profound understanding of pattern and symbolism helps the artist to explore his subjects, either when they are enacted as monsters or fairies occupied in spiritual merging or by copulating in impossible positions to give birth to trees, birds or fantastical machinery that, in his world, may unveil the mysteries of creation and our place in the universe.
Johannes ZITS A great artistic concern of Toronto based artist Zits, is the idea of appearance and vulnerability in the spaces between the private and public. Working in video and multi-media as well as painting, his recent imagery recalls the uneasiness in which we deal with nudity. The artist draws his pictorial commentaries from the cultural and legal restrictions that are applied to exclude us from exploring ourselves as private beings in the public domain.
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