Marianne Vierø/ Annaïk Lou Pitteloud 07/01/12 – 18/02/12
Marianne Vierø – International Pastime
Consisting of recent wall work, installation and photography the show investigates a potential equilibrium between the symbolic and the real. This is done through acknowledging the utilitarian, matter of fact appearance of the various elements that make up the works, while bringing forth in their constellations a kind of iconic quality. In doing this each element contributes to a representation of its own value. Drawing on inspiration from primitive printing techniques, modernist painting, ritualistic artifacts and Macramé the works establish their own logic and at times create interdependent systems.
One example of this is the Wall Stamps, which present basic, geometric marks printed directly onto the gallery wall. The colorful patterns work in direct relation to the black shapes represented in the photographic works and serve as an echo to the elongated, totem-like assemblages found in the space.
Working on a similar parameter are the Strict Inequality works. Here neon lights and vegetables are entangled to form a symbiosis. The brilliance of the one and the ephemerality of the other create a reversely corresponding relationship where the dominant signifier is under constant negotiation.
Vierø’s work has recently been shown at Self Service Open Art Space in Stuttgard, Galeria Boavista in Lisbon, Peter Lav Gallery in Copenhagen and 1857 in Oslo. She was a resident artist at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in 2007, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam from 2008 – 2009 and has recently completed a residency at Triangle Arts Association in NYC. Vierø holds a BFA in photography from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Annaïk Lou Pitteloud – Two Works
Both works presented in this exhibition play with the notion of measurement and appropriate esthetical, conceptual or theoretical references, playfully using the context of art history as a flexible grid on which reflections can be placed.
Entering the exhibition space the viewer is presented with a floor plan of which one of the works mentioned remains invisible.
This work, ‘Transposition‘, appears as a schema on the floor plan.
It appropriates a theory published in 1963 called Proxemics that aimed to establish the measurable distances between people as they interact.
This study is included in the work’s description as the material and a footnote to the title proposes to use this material as a means to question semantics and subsequently reinterpret the whole theory.
Considering that over the last 50 years the interventions of the private sector resemble what was formerly related to the domain of the public powers, insidiously transforming the public space into private space, this transposition of a 60s theory wonders how to redefine the public territory nowadays.
The second work, ‘Ruler‘, a half white half black hair stretched in an acryl container evokes a voodoo-like object in a natural history cabinet or a tool measuring an individual’s life span. By starting with white and ending up with black, this life line naturally tempts one to mentally flip the object around its central point, reversing the reading order to get back to a chronological storyline.
The minimalist look of this object creates friction with the almost shamanistic narrative it generates, playing on expectations and appearances.
These two works share an attempt to reflect on notions of sculpture and time.
They both appropriate esthetics that recall certain genres and put forward specific formal aspects to be loaded with a narrative. That way they mix different theoretical fields (conceptual, esthetical, literary, sociological, and historical) to broaden possible readings of the way a work is embedded in its time-frame.
While ‘Transposition‘ presents a sociological diagram from the 60s as an invisible sculpture in an expanding form resembling the strategies from the same era only to have it fold back onto itself, ‘Ruler‘ reduces the sculpture to a compact object and merges a minimalistic form with an almost animistic content.
In this manner, far from wanting to reproduce academic demonstrations, these works use an historical background not only to comment on the idea of sculpture but to measure a socio-political shift taking place over a precise period of time. They try to adapt to a new card game largely set by conceptual strategies of which the deck has completely changed.
Annaïk Lou Pitteloud (CH, 1980) finished the Hochschule der Kunste Bern in 2005 and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in 2010-2011. Her work was on view a/o in Kunsthalle Bern, Witte de With and Deuxpiece in Basel. In 2010 she was granted with a fellowship from Pro Helvetia.
More information on Pittelouds work can be found on www.annaikloupitteloud.com
On Tuesday 24 January there will be an artist talk between Annaïk Lou Pitteloud and Philippe Pirotte. Everyone is welcome to join us from 20 hrs.
Opening: Sat. 7 January 2012 17 – 19 hrs
Exhibition period: 07/01 – 18/02
Artist talk: 24 January at 20 hrs.
Curator for Dolores: Dorothé Orczyk
The exhibition examines and explores the structures and patterns that form the world around us; the forms are stripped of their context and reevaluated. Vingerling’s paintings are gouache or oil on canvas. In most works much of the painting is left in the prime stages with deliberate minimal brush marks in lines or patterns. Vingerling works to describe the fundamental characteristic and eradicate all parts of the context of forms found in her daily surroundings. The distillation is an attempt to grasp the existence of the natural world. The paintings seen together reflect a world reminiscent of the one we know, but where meaning or historical reference has been discarded. The work process is systematic but intuitive, sometimes resulting in a sense of frustration at not being able to seize hold of the moment completely, because reasoning gets in the way.
A selection of Vingerling’s latest paintings and related gouaches on paper is on view in her 2nd solo show at Ellen de Bruijne Projects.
Evi Vingerling was educated at the Royal Academy for Visual Arts in The Hague (1998-2002) and at the Rijksakademy in Amsterdam (2005-2006). In 2011 she will take part in the residency program at ‘Wiels’ in Brussels. In 2006 she received the Buning Brongersprize for painting, in 2008 she was nominated for the Wolvecampprize, and in 2010 was nominated for the Thieme Award and the Royal Prize for Painting. Recent exhibitions include: Kate Werble Gallery New York; “l’Exposition Continué” (echo), at Cneai in Chatou FR; a collaboration with Wim Kok in ‘PUSH PULL’ Rijks Museum Twente; and ‘New Minimalism’ at Duende Rotterdam. In February her work will be part of an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Den Bosch ‘Reposte’ examining new views on abstraction as well as at the Kunsthal Rotterdam as part of the Caldic Collection’s show ‘I Promise to Love You’.
The Gallery will be present at Art Rotterdam 10 – 13 February
