calendario eventi  :: 

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6/1/2012

Annaik Lou Pitteloud and Marianne Viero

Ellen de Bruijne, Amsterdam

Annaik Lou Pitteloud

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.

Before entering the exhibition the viewer is presented with a floor plan of which only one of the works mentioned is visible in the space. This 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.

‘Transposition’, the second work, only 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.

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 ‘Ruler’ reduces the sculpture to a compact object and merges a minimalistic form with an almost animistic content, ‘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. 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.

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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.

Image: Annaik Lou Pitteloud

Ellen de Bruijne
Rozengracht 207A - 1016 LZ Amsterdam
Opening hours: Tue-Fri 1 – 6 pm, Sat. 1 – 6 pm
1st. Sun. o/t month 2 – 5 pm

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