AS IF IN A FOREIGN COUNTRYcurated by Chris Sharpwith Polly Apfelbaum, Lucas Arruda, Michael Berryhill, Juliette Blightman, Rodrigo Hernández, Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Sonia Leimer, José Antonio Suárez Londoño, Jimena Mendoza, Aliza Nisenbaum, Scott Olson, Arlene Shechet, Patricia Treib
Group Exhibition
Grünangergasse 1
1010 Vienna
7 Sept – 22 Oct 2016
The generally light, thoughtful and buoyant works in this exhibition behave in a variety of different ways. Difficult to locate in time due to their obvious debt to European modernism, they also pay homage to the domestic setting of the historical apartment gallery in which they are exhibited by assuming an almost decorative function. What is more, decidedly crafted-oriented, they are virtually all hand made, and as such, embody the potential intimacy of their home-like context. However, less about self-expression than about the autonomy of the materials and media themselves, all of the pieces in the exhibition speak to a relative forfeiture of the self. The New York-based artist PATRICIA TREIB’s painting “Teal Clock”, 2016, which is fluidly composed of repeated gestures, sometimes within the same painting (wiped away and repeated) until she gets it right, nevertheless yields a manifest measure of intention to the highly diluted oil paint she uses. Vibrant, gestural and serene, this highly organized work speaks to the calligraphic discipline of Treib’s painting practice. The small, markedly quirky and idiosyncratic sculptures of the New York-born and based artist ARLENE SHECHET are the combined byproduct of a playful but strong sense of intention which she all but abandons to the whims of clay and glazing once it enters the kiln. The resultant sculptures such as “Intervals”, “Almost an event”, and “Hint” (all from 2015) are full of a rare conviction as they are of personality and rigor. A Texan by birth, but based in New York, MICHAEL BERRYHILL is known for his unusual and striking, seemingly fauvist/Blaue Reiter-esque palettes, labored technique and elusive pictorial content. The small work “Untitled”, 2016, presented here, which seems depict some kind of vegetal life from, has been so physically labored that the surface has taken on a quasi, translucent and iridescent quality. Norwegian, Kristiansand-based sculptor ANN CATHRIN NOVEMBER HØIBO works with a variety of materials, but has become known in particular for her weavings. Woven on a traditional loom, Høibo follows no set pattern, composing with an almost painterly intuitiveness as she goes along, and thus creates compositions such as “Untitled”, 2014, equally reminiscent of abstraction and landscapes. American, New York-based painter POLLY APFELBAUM has been exploring painting for the past few decades in a variety of media. Her work is concisely represented here by a ceramic wall piece “Amanda”, 2013, with a waffled surface whose bright, motley glaze resembles a classical abstraction, not to mention the structure of Høibo’s wall hanging. Austrian, Vienna-based artist SONIA LEIMER’s benches “I–Beam”, 2015, whose cushions draw upon Soviet textile patterns of propaganda, operate with a certain ambiguity here. At once sculptures and decorative objects, the benches are functional as benches, and underline the exhibition’s nod to the domestic origins in which the (apartment) gallery is located. American, Cleveland-based painter SCOTT OLSON has a reputation for working on treated surfaces with homemade, natural pigments, which are often applied in an exquisitely labored process of addition and subtraction. Here, as well as elsewhere, the highly structured pictorial content of his painting “Untitled”, 2014, is formally evocative of European modernism, bringing to mind pioneers such as Paul Klee, whose work has also been shown in the gallery. The Mexican, currently Paris-based artist RODRIGO HERNÁNDEZ works with classical media such as drawing, painting and sculpture. The sculptures “toute de suite”, “Babylone”, and “Violent Interpenetration of Units” (all from 2016) presented here are the pictorial byproduct of a complex frame of reference which includes Mesoamerican, pre-Columbian iconography, European modernism, and the illustrations of the Mexican illustrator, caricaturist and ethnographer Miguel Covarrubias. At once simple and strange, they blend together the artist’s interest in drawing, painting and sculpture by using a non-noble, craft-oriented art form of papier maché (which is how they are made). The Mexican-American, New York-based painter ALIZA NISENBAUM works within a complex figurative tradition evocative of the initimism of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, Alice Neel and Fairfield Porter, as well as Mexican textiles, among other things, to depict situations or signifiers of richly patterned intimacy. In addition to her portraits of people, she is known to paint highly crafted still lives including books, flowers, handwritten letters and other private and/or domestic elements, such as “Closed to open”, 2015, a collection of envelops, depicted here. At the core of Mexican, currently Prague-based sculptor JIMENA MENDOZA’s practice is a commitment to ceramics and their relationship to a Mexican arts and crafts tradition. These three, small-scale sculptures “Policromía 7, 8, and 10” from 2015 are a strange and deliberate amalgam of Mesocamerican artifact, Soviet-cosmonautic iconography, and German expressionist cinema, all as if they were remnants of a classical sci-fi movie which was never made. The English, Berlin-based artist JULIETTE BLIGHTMAN works in a variety of media including film, installation, performance and painting. Her installation “Better Together”, 2016, uses furniture from the gallery and gallery staff to create a decidedly domestic sculptural installation meant to engender a mood of calm and contemplation. JOSÉ ANTONIO SUÁREZ LONDOÑO is a Colombian artist based in Medillín. Essentially a draftsman, Suarez Londoño makes meticulous drawings as well as etchings such as “no170”, 1999, presented here. His highly personal vocabulary issues as much from literature as does from European modernism and indigenous iconography. Generally working on a note-book size scale, his wildly imaginative works are characterized by intimacy, idiosyncrasy and a certain level of virtuosity. The São Paulo-based, Brazilian painter LUCAS ARRUDA is interested in light, space and atmosphere. Drawing from his imagination, and not observed reality, he principally paints seascape horizons at different times of the day and night and in different types of weather. He is as influenced by the work of Joseph Turner and Gustave Courbet as he is by the likes of the Venezuelan painter Armandro Reverón. Difficult to place in time, Arruda’s painting such as “Untitled”, 2016, can be read as the finale of the exhibition, functioning less like a conclusion than a vista that continues indefinitely outward to a vast and elusive elsewhere.
read inEnglish
As if in a foreign country ist eine Gruppenausstellung, die den Begriff Hommage aus mehreren Perspektiven beleuchtet: historisch, geografisch, kulturell, architektonisch, und vielleicht am wichtigsten, ironisch. Im spielerischen Umgang mit L. P. Hartleys berühmten und oft zitierten Eröffnungssatz zu The Go-Between (1953): „Die Vergangenheit ist ein fremdes Land, dort gelten andere Regeln“, kippt die Ausstellung ehrfurchtsvoll eine Reihe von Annahmen von der Vorstellung der „Vergangenheit“ bis hin zum Begriff der Fremdheit, der in der anachronistischen Bezeichnung „fremdes Land“ eingebettet ist. Dies geschieht dadurch, dass die ausstellenden Kunstschaffenden alle in der Tradition der klassischen Moderne arbeiten, einer Vergangenheit, die nach wie vor sehr präsent ist, und die entweder idiosynkratisch elaboriert oder mit anderen ursprünglichen und Kunsthandwerks-Traditionen gekreuzt wird. Der Begriff der so genannten „Fremdheit“ wird dabei ebenso durch den nicht weniger zweifelhaften Begriff des „Einheimischen“ problematisiert, als ob es überhaupt möglich wäre, letzteren genau zu definieren, insbesondere im 21. Jahrhundert. Und in der Tat, wo auch immer die „Fremdheit“ vorher das „Einheimische“ voraussetzte und umgekehrt, beruht deren soziokulturelle Entmündigung nun großteils auf Gegenseitigkeit und hinterlässt kaum mehr als ein System der kontinuierlichen Hommage. Unterdessen huldigt die Ausstellung dem Umstand, dass die Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder nicht nur eine der ältesten Galerien der Welt ist, sondern seit der Gründung 1923 – damals unter dem Namen Neue Galerie – die gleiche Adresse hat. Indem As if in a foreign country die ursprüngliche Funktion ihres Kontexts als häusliche Wohnfläche gebührlich aufgreift, räumt die Ausstellung auch die symbolische Auflösung der Trennung zwischen Öffentlichem und Privatem im Herzen der Galerie ein. Hommage wird mit Hommage verflochten und zu einem verschwenderischen, wenn auch paradoxen Hommage-Gemisch verwoben. Chris Sharp (*1974, USA) ist Autor und unabhängiger Kurator mit Lebensmittelpunkt in Mexiko-Stadt, wo er zusammen mit dem mexikanischen Künstler Martin Soto Climent den Projektraum Lulu betreibt. Die Ausstellung findet statt im Rahmen des Galerienfestivals curated by_vienna: Meine Herkunft habe ich mir selbst ausgedacht. Den theoretischen Ausgangspunkt für die teilnehmenden Galerien, Kuratorinnen und Kuratoren bildet der titelgebende Essay des Kulturtheoretikers und Autors Diedrich Diederichsen. Mit dem Projekt curated by_vienna unterstützt die Wirtschaftsagentur Wien mit ihrem Kreativzentrum departure seit 2009 die Zusammenarbeit von Wiener Galerien zeitgenössischer Kunst mit internationalen Kuratorinnen und Kuratoren.
The exhibition takes place on the occasion of curated by_vienna 2016.
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