Juliette Bonneviot

Work from Jeune Fille Minimale

“The project is based around the relationship between an eco-Housewife and the waste produced in her daily life. The character in my story is called Jeune Fille Minimale, and is obsessed with using industrial environmental strategies to run her household. The project was inspired by an Internet community of housewives who have adopted the industrial strategy of Zero Waste, ranking their consumption of household goods so as to reduce the amount of waste they produce. The project tells an ecological story, in a way that aims to be as close as possible to reality. Here there is no “green” aesthetic. Instead, I try to place myself in a sort of “dark ecology, “ as theorised by the writer Timothy Morton. “The form of dark ecology is that of a noir film. The noir narrator begins investigating a supposedly external situation, from a supposedly neutral point of view, only to discover that she or he is implicated in it. The point of view of the narrator becomes stained with desire. ( … ) The ecological thought includes negativity, irony, ugliness and horror.” Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought. The experience of the housewife transports her onto a larger scale than that of her household and her possessions. This sensation is very disturbing, not because this world is exterior and strange to her, but because she realises that she, and her behavior, are integral parts of it. In fact, waste becomes the typical narrative figure of the stranger that is so common to romantic literature. This stranger then becomes even stranger, the more the housewife tries to understand its nature; the more she senses the extent of her own ecology, the more she is drawn to him.
[…]

While adopting the same characters, I decided to combine several narrative forms, thus providing myself with a tale on several levels. There is the main story, which is fictional. But this fiction becomes almost documentary, because it includes references to the web community of housewives, which was the initial inspiration for the story. I have copied down notes and comments directly from the forum discussions of the housewives. The Minimale Jeune Fille thus reports the stories of these housewives. I also chose to include myself in this story, giving it an autobiographical aspect. I’ve followed all the housewives’ advices to reduce my own waste. I used any plastic waste that I could not reduce in the production of my own work. I became the eco-Housewife.
[…]

In a sense, I’d like my story of dark ecology to speak about the transmission of knowledge. Knowledge and tacit memory are, in part, built up by the transmission of stories. I think that one of the strengths of narratives consist in their ability to modify human behaviours”

Ditte Gantriis

Work from her “COMPANY”.

“The five large collages are printed on long roller blinds, and all combine both digital images and hand-drawn elements. The blinds have been installed spatially in Green is Gold’s exhibition space – a once inhabited apartment – and are thus separated from their original function.

The collages consist of fragmented images of various houseplants collected from online shops, lifestyle blogs etc., whose purpose is to guide us to safe home-design solutions. However the grainy images also evoke enlarged close-ups of the kind of photographic decorations made familiar from franchise coffee shops and restaurant chains or advertising banners from shopping centres and airports. The prints are layered with painterly gestures that, despite their analog quality, seem to reflect the inherent materiality of the digital images.

Whether the severely pruned living room plants are real or fake is difficult to tell. The difference appears insignificant and is perhaps of no consequence since both serve the same purpose: to furnish living spaces with pleasant ambience. The blinds are installed in such a way as to lend the two-dimensional surfaces physical form, which again creates a persistent presence. Something similar applies to the somewhat comical and strenuous soundtrack, which in its cheerful and digitally sounding way attempts to keep the collages company.

With COMPANY Gantriis asks pertinent questions about what keeps who company and vice-versa. What informs the exhibition, as its title also alludes to, is corporate and anonymous design. This aesthetic is the very opposite of the personal, yet it is perhaps exactly what keeps us company in our private and personal spaces.”- Green is Gold

Katharina Grosse

Work from I Think This Is a Pine Tree at KHB.

“In a large room, three tree trunks lie haphazardly in a pile at a slight angle to the wall. They have been stripped of their branches and bark but their roots remain intact, awkwardly protruding into a closed doorway. The trees along with the floor and wall of the museum have been doused with an energetic — if not defiant — series of gestures of brightly colored spray paint. The piece, “I Think This Is a Pine Tree” (2013), by Katharina Grosse at the Hamburger Banhof Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin was a jolt to my system. Like any discovery of an uprooted tree, Grosse’s piece is familiar, while taking on its own immediate dramatic presence. It contains recognizable elements — gestures evocative of Abstract Expressionism, an application reminiscent of graffiti — but the work is not merely a mix and match of previously explored territory.

“I Think This Is a Pine Tree” delivered a sensation often sought by any visitor to a contemporary art museum. Goosebumps formed on my neck and blood pumped to my limbs causing the urge to run, skip, and jump around in a fight or flight response of viewership. My ego was having none of it. “Come on you’re in a museum. Yeah, you came here searching for this very feeling but play it cool. You are an educated adult for god’s sake! Go read the description, look ponderously at the piece, and start figuring out why it made you feel this way. Spread your response out over time; mix some delayed gratification in with work. Maybe write something about it. Just do not hurdle those tree trunks!”

Traditional Abstract Expressionism is often applied (and I say this as someone who painted in an Abstract Expressionist style for some years) through pushing paint, building on blank canvas and other paint. The physical structure and texture of an Ab-Ex piece is often redefined by the medium itself. Ab-Ex artists have broken the picture plane, cut through the canvas, exposed the stretcher bars, even hacked them up but the plane almost always remains in a back and forth relationship with the medium, even if only referentially or antagonistically. Grosse is not painting outside the picture plane, because there is none. She is using spray paint exactly how it was designed to be used, to paint over something, to move without touching what is painted, free of friction. Spray paint evokes graffiti, but there is nothing approaching image or text in Grosse’s marks, nor is the piece framed by or directly responding to the architecture like graffiti often does. Rather, the floor, the wall, the trees are all fair game in coloring movements. The distinction between these structures is not necessarily ignored nor accentuated by the application of the paint. As a result, “I Think This Is a Pine Tree” manages to be a series of actions, despite its form as an installation, sculpture, and painting…” – Hyperallergic

Katja Strunz

Work from Berlinische Gallery.

“…Four pieces, 3 sculptural works and one work on paper, whilst the curation of the show seems balanced, the necessity of having four pieces seems perhaps doubtful. The space is rightfully dominated by two large-scale sculptural works titled ‘ Tellurische Kontraktion’ and ‘Tellurischer Riemen’.

Tellurischer Kontraktion greets you on entrance into the space resembling a scrunched up piece of paper, its close resemblance to the everyday object allows us to imagine an aspect of movement and a closeness that is quite unexpected from blackened steel and aluminum. The piece, when unfolded holds the capacity of the exhibition space questioning notions of space and perception. The scale of the work allows the steel to, in itself achieve a successful execution of its own materiality whilst at the same time embodying the materiality and structure of paper.

Behind Tellurischer Kontraktion, commanding attention from the get-go is Teller Riemen, again, blackened steel, but this time the piece stands at a height of 8 meters, supported by a steel rope and an internal frame which gives the piece its form. Again this piece references the everyday object allowing us to imagine how the work would materially function yet in reality removing that function and creating a space in which to look at the formal in another context.” – La Scatola Gallery

Wade Guyton

Work from his current exhibition at Petzel.

“In 2007 Guyton showed a series of black paintings made with his Epson 9600 printer and covered the gallery’s concrete floor with a facsimile of his studio’s plywood floor. This time he has made five new works on linen specifically for the gallery’s walls. Using the same digital file from 2007, but enlarged to accommodate a new printer’s increased width, they are printed with an Epson 11880. The ink is UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta. The works are turned on their sides, hung horizontally and stretched to fit the gallery walls. Two of them are jammed in a corner…” – Petzel

Edgar Martins

Work form The Rehearsal of Space & the Poetic Impossibility to Manage the Infinite

“In 2012 I approached the European Space Agency with a very ambitious proposal: to produce the most comprehensive survey ever assembled about a leading scientific and space exploration organization. I have contacted ESA at an interesting time in their history when they are looking to establish a more coherent dialogue with the wider public and the arts. Unlike NASA or CERN, ESA do not have an artist residency program. So I was delighted when they agreed to support my endeavor. It is the first time in their history that they have granted an artist exclusive access to all of their facilities, staff, programs, technology, partners, etc. The access I have been granted is unparalleled, even within the framework of the residency programs specified above. This project had an 18-month gestation period and will be launched in early 2014. It documents over 15 separate facilities, located across the world, namely in the UK, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Kazakhstan, French Guiana, etc. These locations range from test centers, robotics departments, jet propulsion laboratories, space simulators, launch sites and launch platforms, astronaut training centers and training modules, satellites and technological components, payload/launcher assembly and integration rooms, etc. I feel fortunate that ESA has recognized, through my proposal, that artists should be entitled to access and engage with space. I was also heartened that ESA welcomed the idea that I may bring with me a critical and artistic perspective. This projects looks, therefore, to engage with ESA and its partners’ programs –the microgravity, telecommunication, navigation, lunar and Mars exploration programs, among others–, whilst also reflecting on the new politics of space exploration as well as the impact of this kind of technological application on our social consciousness. As someone who has always worked in hard-to-access environments, I am interested in the dialogue that these environments can provoke. There are multi-layered challenges for artists working within any established structure – cultural, ethical, legal. In the case of space exploration organizations this can be further exacerbated given the increasing privatization and militarization of space and the constraints that these engagements can activate. My main challenge was, therefore, to develop an approach that was simultaneously descriptive and speculative, and which enabled me to engage with all those I entered in contact with – from scientists to the public. Like a topographer or visual archaeologist I set out to discover and reveal the spectrum of possibilities awakened by the objects and places I visited, consequently, inviting a broader and more intricate experience of its hidden meanings. This project explores the theme of space exploration with a strong sense of perspective, an understanding of the other sector’s operating culture and an unequivocal ability to articulate, critique and engage. The work has a cross-sectoral approach and so it will incorporate a variety of audience driven events such as seminars, exhibitions and discussion forums, scheduled to take place between 2014 and 2018.”

Halina Kliem

Work from her oeuvre.

“We find here a characteristic logic, the peculiar logic of the “inside
out” (‡ l’envers), of the “turnabout,”, of a continual shifting from top to
bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties,
humili- actions, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings. Mikhail Bakhtin

I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer.
It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way.
Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful.
But nevertheless it is inevitable. Martha Graham

Can you meet me halfway, right at the borderline?
That’s where I am gonne wait for you
I’ll be lookin’ out night and day
Took my heart to the limit, and this is where I stay. Black Eyed Peas, Meet me Halfway

Meudon, 1912: Serge Diaghilev, impresario of Ballets Russes, in a rage enters the splendid villa on the outskirts of Paris, with one intention: to disturb and forever end the events unfolding in the villa’s surrounding garden. Here, he knew he would find his lover, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, almost naked, dancing in the dubious private audience of Auguste Rodin. Diaghilev’s infamous jealousy, history books inform us today, is the reason that only one 19 cm large draft of the bronze sculpture was delivered to posterity. A second, more apocryphal version of the affair, emerged 76 years later in the publication of Jean Cocteau’s diaries. “The statues ended”, the diary states, when Nijinsky in his second meeting with the artist, “turns around and Rodin, fly open, is masturbating.”

The Rodin-Nijinsky connection offers yet a third narrative regarding the relation of desire and art: This time evolving around the sculptor’s relentless, aesthetic quest for sculptural movement and the dancer’s goal to make movement sculptural. This is another story of desire, straining and bending boundaries along the lines of their reciprocal becoming, desiring to possess each other, be like one another, and exploring of the body as tool to unravel the energy, passion and ecstasy common to human experience.

No stranger to this quest, Halina Kliem, in her second solo exhibition at DUVE Berlin, investigates what it means to set oneself up in the midst of the phenomenological divide that is at stake in desire: the obsession with an object or the desire to become that object.” – DUVE, Berlin

via Dust Magazine

Collin Snapp

Work from his oeuvre

“In a world where technology relegates us to the status of objects observers observed where ordinary experience is so infiltrated with media isolating organic life moments becomes on one hand a keepsake and on the other hand the spectacle of visibility of growth something utterly distanced from tory involment It has been said that one of the functions of art is to critically disrupt the seeming transparency between viewers and objects viewed and Colin Snapp with his series called tc Studies wants to question whether images can preserve the vital presence of what they necessarily represent
These images are derived from video footage of various plant species The artist produced these works by photographing the lcd screen (view finder) of his video camera and printing the image of the 3inch screen at a significantly magnified proportion This process came about as a by product from the Panorama project in which Colin Snapp spent a month filming within national parks Much of the footage ended up being of ors experiencing these national parks through their cameras In a sense the view finder has become a sort of third eye and within these natural landscapes becomes very apparent What might otherwise be doentary realism plain and simple translates into commentary on the contemporary technologies by which we take in the world thus labeling it and reducing it to the status of a commodity”

Diane Simpson

Work from her oeuvre.

“The six pieces in the show all appear to be based on wearable items that have had three-dimensionality steam-pressed out, but that still retain a sense of volume and, additionally, assume new functional identities. A brand new work, “Collar (Pagoda),” appears to be the enlarged version of a clerical collar spread open horizontally atop a slender stand. Constructed from painted aluminum, linoleum and rivets, it suggests a roof, a set of shoulder pads and an open book. A wall sculpture, “Bib”(Quilted),” which dates from 2006 and is made from vinyl, felt and thread, could be a) an umpire’s padding; b) a cathedral floor plan; c) an X-ray shield; d) a priest’s chasuble; or e) other. So it goes: an Amish bonnet is a Brünnhilde helmet upside-down; a black formal coat, a carapace.” – NY Times

Surface Poetry at Boetzelaer|Nispen.

“Today, the digital screen has become the predominant surface for engaging with visual content. The texture of the digital screen, characterized by its flat surface, artificial smoothness, juxtaposition of different windows, and chromatic backlit glow, constitutes the aesthetic framework in which we perceive and act upon a large part of the images we digest daily. Getting accustomed to its visual and haptic settings, we expect other surfaces and visual stimuli to appear and respond in a similar fashion. We have never been able to demand as much from a surface as we do in the age of digital screens. Having turned into intimate objects, screens have never been more responsive, more aligned with our needs, more flexible and addicting. Yet, at the same time, these beautiful things remain strangely alien, remote and detached in their closed-off technological perfection.

If digital surfaces are so ubiquitous, if we embrace them in such a powerful way, we need to question how they actually influence our visual culture. What are the aesthetic norms and affordances of the screens that we look at and touch continuously? How do they shape our perceptual and tactile conventions – also in situations that are not directly related to digital devices? This exhibition traces the impact of digital surfaces in the selected works of 3 artists – Katharina Fengler (1980, Germany), Ida Lehtonen (1986, Finland) and Rachel de Joode (1979, The Netherlands).

In Katharina Fengler’s paintings flatness dominates. On her large airbrushed works on paper fore- and background merge, while high and low contrast meet. Her paintings have an absolute presence, no before and after. The eye doesn’t know where to focus, how to zoom in or out, where to look first. Her paintings conjure the atemporality of the screen, the juxtaposition of disparate entities on one equalizing plane. This obstruction of perspective, in combination with a mesmerizing presence, also translates to her sculptural work. As if they fell from the paintings, these objects occupy space like alien things. Upon closer inspection, they reveal distinctly human marks, such as handprints, which complicate their smooth, Photoshop-like appeal.

Ida Lehtonen’s canvases display digital prints. In her collages, images are layered, merged and folded into each other, displaying frictions and traces that are entirely software-generated. Abstract landscapes with an almost painterly quality emerge. As if the screen had collapsed, these landscapes present us with a mush of patterns and glitches, laying bare textures that otherwise remain hidden by the smooth functionality of our interfaces. Placed in the exhibition space, it looks as if the contents of our computer screens, tablets and smartphones have spilled out and morphed onto hanging structures and objects.

Rachel de Joode’s sculptures often play with expectations connected to specific materials and surfaces. In her work, digital images are given a material presence in the physical space of the gallery, which they nevertheless have to share with other objects. In the case of “Reclining Wet Clay On Greek Marble,” a high-definition photograph of wet clay is mounted on top of a marble stone as a sculptural element, generating a sense of dissonance that addresses our habituated perception of each medium. For “Folded Skins,” De Joode pasted together images of her skin to create a group of photographic sculptures. These sculptures are informed by the smooth and homogenizing effects of digital image-processing software, while simultaneously highlighting the uneven and porous textures of the human skin. The photo collage is printed on round, bean-shaped cut-outs, which are somewhat oddly grouped together. This further complicates their presence as objects constituted on the bleeding edges of the slick and the granular, the artificial and the organic, surface and depth, the screen and the gallery space.” – Boetzelaer|Nispen