Figure - Five Positions
17 Mar - 06 May 2006
FIGURE – FIVE POSITIONS
Michael Bauer, Samuel Blaser, Boyan, Duncan Marquiss, Alessandra Tavernini
17th March - 6h May 2006
Opening: Friday, 17th March 2006, 6 - 8pm, kilchmann plus
The Peter Kilchmann Gallery is pleased to announce our new exhibition including contemporary paintings and drawings by Michael Bauer, Samuel Blaser, Boyan, Duncan Marquiss and Alessandra Tavernini. We will introduce five international positions.
The carefully painted images by Samuel Blaser (born 1973, Switzerland) show people that look at us directly and sometimes slightly past us. We mostly see naked women and men with irritating uniform faces; mostly standing or sitting in only scarcely indicated rooms. There are moments of interpersonal communication the narrative content of which can only be guessed by gestures and by the constellations of the figures to one another. The technique of the paintings is related to medieval painting. Blaser reduces his figures to a point where it isn’t primarily their individuality that is most important anymore, but instead he concentrates on an examination of the natural conditions of men in general. The focus lies as much within a reflection on archetypal structures as on the terms and conditions of social interaction.
Michael Bauer (born 1973, Germany) uses strategies from cultural tradition as well as media images to create a fantastic and monstrous cosmos of its own. We are looking at crooked and bizarre faces that are overcharged with symbols and codes. Pointy noses or amoeba-like bulges grow in every direction and thick traces of colour turn into monstrous phalli which are wearing pink condoms or heroic hats. The urge to interpret and contextualise these images leaves us stranded in most cases, because the artist uses the whole repertoire of painting in a very anarchic way and challenges the visual and emotional perception of the viewer over and over again.
The Pervert 2 is the title of a work by Boyan (born 1975 in Bulgaria, lives in Israel). We are watching a man wearing a dressing gown who is peeping through a spyhole into another room. To his right there is a big vase similarly ornamented to the man’s clothing. The spectator turns into a voyeur himself by watching the man watch. The strongly connoted title expands the imagination of the spectator, i.e. his gaze, even further. We assume to know what is being watched behind the door. In his images Boyan refers to photography and sceneries from Hollywood cinema, but they also show politicians and art celebrities. Thus, the question of representation and pose are the main issue: A couple, only wearing bathing suits and posing in front of a swimming pool, seems to be smiling straight into the camera as well as the guests of a fancy dinner party simper at each other (Breakfast at Tiffany’s).
Ohne Titel (Disneyland) / Untitled (Disneyland), 2003 is the title of a painting by Alessandra Tavernini (born 1967, Switzerland). We see a huge Donald Duck-character standing next to a smiling boy. Associations to a private album of photographs arouse and remind us of Holiday snapshots. However, the precise occasion and origin of the image stays blurry. The portraits of Tavernini are detached from any context, they are autonomous and concentrated and suggest intimacy and privacy. The artist is working with the visualisation of memories and thereby doesn’t only question the possibilities of visualising personal souvenirs but also addresses the question of reality in painting itself. Even though we might have never been to Disneyland, these images nevertheless evoke familiar and intimate emotions.
Duncan Marquiss (born 1979, Scotland) examines the relationship between human beings and nature. The atmosphere in his work evokes ghost stories of romanticism or reminds us of fantasy-novels where figures wearing hoods ride through obscure landscapes and fabulous creatures appear in the dark. The artist often reverts to the iconography of the lycanthrope. The gesture of a man becoming an animal incorporates a symbolic return to the animalistic, to a state of raw desires. Using the media of drawing as well as video, Marquiss creates a dark and magic world sharing similarities to old folk tales and myths as well as to art history’s interest in the classic thematic of existence, temporality and death.
For more information please contact Cynthia Krell at +41 44 440 39 31 or c.krell@kilchmanngalerie.com.
© Image by Alessandra Tavernini
Michael Bauer, Samuel Blaser, Boyan, Duncan Marquiss, Alessandra Tavernini
17th March - 6h May 2006
Opening: Friday, 17th March 2006, 6 - 8pm, kilchmann plus
The Peter Kilchmann Gallery is pleased to announce our new exhibition including contemporary paintings and drawings by Michael Bauer, Samuel Blaser, Boyan, Duncan Marquiss and Alessandra Tavernini. We will introduce five international positions.
The carefully painted images by Samuel Blaser (born 1973, Switzerland) show people that look at us directly and sometimes slightly past us. We mostly see naked women and men with irritating uniform faces; mostly standing or sitting in only scarcely indicated rooms. There are moments of interpersonal communication the narrative content of which can only be guessed by gestures and by the constellations of the figures to one another. The technique of the paintings is related to medieval painting. Blaser reduces his figures to a point where it isn’t primarily their individuality that is most important anymore, but instead he concentrates on an examination of the natural conditions of men in general. The focus lies as much within a reflection on archetypal structures as on the terms and conditions of social interaction.
Michael Bauer (born 1973, Germany) uses strategies from cultural tradition as well as media images to create a fantastic and monstrous cosmos of its own. We are looking at crooked and bizarre faces that are overcharged with symbols and codes. Pointy noses or amoeba-like bulges grow in every direction and thick traces of colour turn into monstrous phalli which are wearing pink condoms or heroic hats. The urge to interpret and contextualise these images leaves us stranded in most cases, because the artist uses the whole repertoire of painting in a very anarchic way and challenges the visual and emotional perception of the viewer over and over again.
The Pervert 2 is the title of a work by Boyan (born 1975 in Bulgaria, lives in Israel). We are watching a man wearing a dressing gown who is peeping through a spyhole into another room. To his right there is a big vase similarly ornamented to the man’s clothing. The spectator turns into a voyeur himself by watching the man watch. The strongly connoted title expands the imagination of the spectator, i.e. his gaze, even further. We assume to know what is being watched behind the door. In his images Boyan refers to photography and sceneries from Hollywood cinema, but they also show politicians and art celebrities. Thus, the question of representation and pose are the main issue: A couple, only wearing bathing suits and posing in front of a swimming pool, seems to be smiling straight into the camera as well as the guests of a fancy dinner party simper at each other (Breakfast at Tiffany’s).
Ohne Titel (Disneyland) / Untitled (Disneyland), 2003 is the title of a painting by Alessandra Tavernini (born 1967, Switzerland). We see a huge Donald Duck-character standing next to a smiling boy. Associations to a private album of photographs arouse and remind us of Holiday snapshots. However, the precise occasion and origin of the image stays blurry. The portraits of Tavernini are detached from any context, they are autonomous and concentrated and suggest intimacy and privacy. The artist is working with the visualisation of memories and thereby doesn’t only question the possibilities of visualising personal souvenirs but also addresses the question of reality in painting itself. Even though we might have never been to Disneyland, these images nevertheless evoke familiar and intimate emotions.
Duncan Marquiss (born 1979, Scotland) examines the relationship between human beings and nature. The atmosphere in his work evokes ghost stories of romanticism or reminds us of fantasy-novels where figures wearing hoods ride through obscure landscapes and fabulous creatures appear in the dark. The artist often reverts to the iconography of the lycanthrope. The gesture of a man becoming an animal incorporates a symbolic return to the animalistic, to a state of raw desires. Using the media of drawing as well as video, Marquiss creates a dark and magic world sharing similarities to old folk tales and myths as well as to art history’s interest in the classic thematic of existence, temporality and death.
For more information please contact Cynthia Krell at +41 44 440 39 31 or c.krell@kilchmanngalerie.com.
© Image by Alessandra Tavernini