calendario eventi  :: 

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6/9/2012

Two exhibitions

Spruth Magers, Berlin

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Thomas Demand at the Berlin gallery. On display are the new film project and a group of current photographic works by the artist. Pacific Sun (2012) is the central focus of the exhibition and is the artist's most elaborate and ambitious film project up to now. Already in several film works such as Tunnel (1999) or Rolltreppe / Escalator (2000), Demand concerned himself with complex constructions of reality by creating a temporal movement by means of tracking shots and animations within his paper models. The two-minute-long film Pacific Sun is based on a video clip on YouTube showing the footage of a surveillance camera from the dining room of a cruise ship during turbulent sea conditions. The pieces of furniture—tables, chairs, cabinets, cutlery, and even a sideboard —begin to move through the space from one side to the other, as if guided by an invisible force. Demand reconstructed the interior space and objects out of paper on a scale of 1:1 and, together with a twelve-member team of animators, reenacted the exact choreography of the incident and photographed every minimal movement of the objects. Thís gave rise to 2,944 images which were combined into a continuous film sequence. The neutralized design of the interior space directs the focus above all onto the physical dynamism as well as the falling movement of the individual objects. In spite of the spatial illusion, which does not convey an impression that the images are real, the viewer is nonetheless disoriented and unsettled by the temporal drama and the narrative course of an incipient catastrophe. Arising simultaneously in the viewer is a strange fascination with the complex choreography of the participating objects.

In addition to the film, Demand is presenting a series of photographs that make reference to press photos which are to some extent still a part of the most recent reportage. Vault (2012) is based on photographs of a strongroom concealed beneath the Paris gallery of the art dealer Guy Wildenstein, in which the police discovered more than thirty missing and embezzled paintings. In the photos published by the press, the pictures are leaned against walls and shelves in various stackings and reveal only their back sides, and thereby their objecthood. In his spatial view, Demand pointedly emphasizes the formal correspondence between the steel beams in the cellar storeroom and the hoarded pictures, which reveal themselves to be framings within framings. While the preliminary investigation of the gallery proceeds further, Demand's work may also be interpreted with regard to the current debate concerning the storage of extensive segments of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

In Kontrollraum / Control Room (2011), the artist turns his attention to the interior view of the control room of the atomic reactor Fukushima in Japan, shortly after the earthquake and the evacuation of the workers. In this tightly organized spatial structure, with its control buttons and display panels, the only indications of the catastrophe are the plastic ceiling segments which have become unfastened. The discrepancy between spatial, functional order and the intrusion of an uncontrollable force may be read as a metaphor for the fragility of the perception of reality in itself. Precisely this aspect of mutability, which becomes perceptible in situations before or after an event of far-reaching consequences, is characteristic of the works of Thomas Demand.

Thomas Demand pursues an ongoing interest in the media of sculpture, photography, and architecture, which he combines in his works in a complex manner. In his filmic and photographic works, he presents reduced inconographies of historically significant spaces and the events occurring in them, which insert themselves into cultural memory through images conveyed by the media. Proceeding from these visual patterns, the artist builds space-encompassing, original-sized models out of fragile materials such as paper or cardboard. He illuminates them with a clear, sharply focused handling of light and photographs them with a large-format camera; afterwards he destroys the models to save space, and thereby accentuates the ephemeral duration of the objects, which remains perceptible in the photographs. Demand's photographs, to which he assigns simple, generalized titles, actively challenge the memory of the viewer by reconstructing traces and indications of decisive and in some cases dramatic events. Thus motifs of his works have included the Oval Office of the American president (Presidency, 2008), the Stasi headquarters after they were stormed (Büro / Office, 1995), and the bathtub in which the German politician Uwe Barschel died (Badezimmer / Bathroom, 1997). In his photographs, he links historical events with the capacity of certain architectural works for representing social utopias and the endeavor to effect changes just as for announcing danger or menace. The artisanal precision of the models leaves the artificiality of the images always visible: As frozen still lifes, they develop varying perceptions of reality and leave the viewer space for his own interpreting and imagining.

Thomas Demand lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. He has presented his works during recent years in a variety of international solo exhibitions, such as at the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2006), the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2008), the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2009-2010), as well as the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010). This year he has realized, among others, extensive individual projects at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, Kaldor Public Arts Projects #25, Sydney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; this last project is also on display at the Victoria Art Gallery, Melbourne. Moreover, Pacific Sun forms a part of this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

--- Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present an exhibition of new work by Gary Hume. For the artist’s second solo show in Berlin, the gallery will showcase an intimate series of never-seen-before works on paper, completed by the addition of gloss paint upon the glass of the frame. These multi-layered compositions will be shown alongside three recent paintings on aluminium. A member of the celebrated group of ‘Young British Artists’ who emerged from London’s Goldsmiths College in the late 1980s, Hume has developed a distinctive visual language of bold, simplified forms and an innovative use of colour. Renowned for his large-scale paintings which use high gloss paint to create planes of industrial colour, Gary Hume’s principal thematic concerns are colour and light and formal ambiguity, while his subject matter ranges from friends, family and celebrities, to motifs drawn from nature and childhood. Recognisable images, sometimes sourced from magazines or snapshots and often of a personal, sentimental nature are schematized, abbreviated and silhouetted almost to the point of abstraction so that the original source material is rarely traceable within the final work. 2 will bring together a selection of works on paper, produced between 2008 - 2010. The charcoal sketches were put aside until recently when the artist had the idea of adding to the existing works by painting the glass of their frames. The monochrome drawings are thus enlivened with colour and texture, imbuing certain details of the earlier compositions with increased significance. The works reveal a further experimentation with paint on different surfaces, as well as highlighting Hume’s interest in the issues of repetition and process in artistic production. Also on show will be three small-format works painted on aluminum. Hume’s signature bright colours are given extra luminosity through the use of gloss paint on the metal surface. In Red Column (2012) the impenetrable fields of red and beige colour evoke mid century abstraction while illustrating the artist’s intrigue in the fluid, highly reflective qualities of gloss paint. Hume adopts a darker, more somber palette in the portrait Untitled (2012). Here line is articulated as thin ridges of paint, which disrupt the surface of the expanse of colour, acting as walls or dams between different areas of paint, and tracing the outline of the facial features of a person. Gary Hume’s retrospective exhibition Flashback, organised by the Arts Council is currently on tour in the UK, showing at Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton; Jerwood Gallery, Hastings and Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen. In 2013, Tate Britain will present a survey exhibition of the artist’s work (4 June – 8 September 2013). Gary Hume lives and works between London and New York. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and the São Paulo Bienial in 1996, the same year he was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 2001 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Recent solo exhibitions include ICA, London (1999), The National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (1999), Fundação La Caixa, Barcelona (2000), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2003), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004), the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004) and Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2008). Group shows include Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001), Kunsthalle Basel (2002), Louisiana Museum, Denmark (2004), Tate Britain, London (2004), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006). Image: Thomas Demand
Pacific Sun, 2012
Video 120 sec, stereo (production still)
© Thomas Demand / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

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For further information and press enquiries please contact Silvia Baltschun (sb@spruethmagers.com).

Opening reception: 07.06.2012, 6 - 9 pm

Spruth Magers
Oranienburger Straße 18, D-10178 Berlin
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11am-6pm
Admission: Free

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