Ayşe Erkmen, Tamara Grcic, Janice Kerbel, Karin Sander
13 May - 18 Jun 2016
AYŞE ERKMEN, TAMARA GRCIC, JANICE KERBEL, KARIN SANDER
13 May – 18 June 2016
With Ayşe Erkmen, Tamara Grcic, Janice Kerbel, and Karin Sander the exhibition at the Barbara Gross Galerie brings together four artists who calculate with the incalculable in their work. They set in motion processes that make room for the effects of time and coincidence, or they intervene in procedures that cannot be completely controlled. Revealing and maintaining the open-endedness of possibilities allows a surprising order to unfold—one that is not random, but remains tautly stretched between precisely formulated, "xed points.
In her series Patina Paintings Karin Sander merely de"nes the rules for production; the results are left up to the unpredictabilities of external circumstances. She takes white-primed standard canvases, and leaves them in various places, unprotected and exposed, for a certain period of time. Each painting takes on a patina that tells a story of its own: like a photograph taken in a long exposure, the paintings re#ect an experimental process marked by dust, dirt, scratches, discoloration, and layers of deposits, which become a visual protocol of what has happened.
The small sculptures that join together to form a colorful landscape in Ayşe Erkmen’s work also owe their individual shape to the directness of their creation. The artist works the negative shape directly into a sand mass, then casts the hollow in bronze. The objects’ colored surfaces are streaked with metallic, shimmering folds and ridges created by treating them with acid and "ring in pigment. Each of the titles refers to a color in the Pantone system. The resulting patinas, however, depending upon the length and intensity of "ring, are never quite predictable: it is not the color it is. The color scheme in the gallery is also not quite "xed. The airy, vaulted panel of fabric that Erkmen stretches across the skylight like a baldachin immerses the space in a luminous, sunny yellow that takes on various shadings over the course of the day
Tamara Grcic makes use of these kinds of unstable, transitory conditions while waiting for exactly the point when a “before” and an “after” #are up simultaneously. In the black-and-white photographs from her series Brandung (Surf), this moment is the one in between the ebb and #ow of waves, when shimmering seawater foams around rough rocks. To make her colored, re#ective Köpfe (Heads) Grcic waits for the moment when a glowing glass balloon being shaped by a glassblower takes on the shape and size of a human head. At that point, the artist stops the process and uses her own handmade tools to add two eyes to the glass body. Snuggled in soft, colorful pieces of clothing, the fragile, barely indicated faces rest safely, as if inside a nest.
In her Home Climate Gardens, Janice Kerbel designs utopian gardens for the interiors of modern metropolises: perfectly thought-out ecosystems protected from external environmental in#uences, intended for laundromats, gyms, or revolving restaurants. However, this reconciliation of the yearning for nature and total design succeeds only on paper. Kerbel’s gardens are drawings of abstract beauty. As idealized models, their precise, geometrical shapes capture something that is actually undergoing constant change: a reality that evades absolute control.
Ayşe Erkmen, *1949 in Istanbul, Turkey, lives in Istanbul and Berlin. 2011 she represented Turkey at the 54th Venice Biennial. Tamara Grcic, *1964 in Munich, lives in Frankfurt a. M. Since 2014 she is a professor of sculpture at Kunsthochschule Mainz. Janice Kerbel, *1969 in Toronto, Canada, lives in London, where she teaches at Goldsmiths College. 2015 she was nominated for the Turner-Prize. Karin Sander, *1957 in Bensberg, lives in Berlin and Zurich, where she teaches as a professor of art and architecture at the ETH Zurich. In 2015 she was a fellow at the Villa Massimo in Rome.
13 May – 18 June 2016
With Ayşe Erkmen, Tamara Grcic, Janice Kerbel, and Karin Sander the exhibition at the Barbara Gross Galerie brings together four artists who calculate with the incalculable in their work. They set in motion processes that make room for the effects of time and coincidence, or they intervene in procedures that cannot be completely controlled. Revealing and maintaining the open-endedness of possibilities allows a surprising order to unfold—one that is not random, but remains tautly stretched between precisely formulated, "xed points.
In her series Patina Paintings Karin Sander merely de"nes the rules for production; the results are left up to the unpredictabilities of external circumstances. She takes white-primed standard canvases, and leaves them in various places, unprotected and exposed, for a certain period of time. Each painting takes on a patina that tells a story of its own: like a photograph taken in a long exposure, the paintings re#ect an experimental process marked by dust, dirt, scratches, discoloration, and layers of deposits, which become a visual protocol of what has happened.
The small sculptures that join together to form a colorful landscape in Ayşe Erkmen’s work also owe their individual shape to the directness of their creation. The artist works the negative shape directly into a sand mass, then casts the hollow in bronze. The objects’ colored surfaces are streaked with metallic, shimmering folds and ridges created by treating them with acid and "ring in pigment. Each of the titles refers to a color in the Pantone system. The resulting patinas, however, depending upon the length and intensity of "ring, are never quite predictable: it is not the color it is. The color scheme in the gallery is also not quite "xed. The airy, vaulted panel of fabric that Erkmen stretches across the skylight like a baldachin immerses the space in a luminous, sunny yellow that takes on various shadings over the course of the day
Tamara Grcic makes use of these kinds of unstable, transitory conditions while waiting for exactly the point when a “before” and an “after” #are up simultaneously. In the black-and-white photographs from her series Brandung (Surf), this moment is the one in between the ebb and #ow of waves, when shimmering seawater foams around rough rocks. To make her colored, re#ective Köpfe (Heads) Grcic waits for the moment when a glowing glass balloon being shaped by a glassblower takes on the shape and size of a human head. At that point, the artist stops the process and uses her own handmade tools to add two eyes to the glass body. Snuggled in soft, colorful pieces of clothing, the fragile, barely indicated faces rest safely, as if inside a nest.
In her Home Climate Gardens, Janice Kerbel designs utopian gardens for the interiors of modern metropolises: perfectly thought-out ecosystems protected from external environmental in#uences, intended for laundromats, gyms, or revolving restaurants. However, this reconciliation of the yearning for nature and total design succeeds only on paper. Kerbel’s gardens are drawings of abstract beauty. As idealized models, their precise, geometrical shapes capture something that is actually undergoing constant change: a reality that evades absolute control.
Ayşe Erkmen, *1949 in Istanbul, Turkey, lives in Istanbul and Berlin. 2011 she represented Turkey at the 54th Venice Biennial. Tamara Grcic, *1964 in Munich, lives in Frankfurt a. M. Since 2014 she is a professor of sculpture at Kunsthochschule Mainz. Janice Kerbel, *1969 in Toronto, Canada, lives in London, where she teaches at Goldsmiths College. 2015 she was nominated for the Turner-Prize. Karin Sander, *1957 in Bensberg, lives in Berlin and Zurich, where she teaches as a professor of art and architecture at the ETH Zurich. In 2015 she was a fellow at the Villa Massimo in Rome.