Amikam Toren - Neither Bread nor Painting. This is the first public showing of Amikam Toren's Neither Bread nor Painting, a group of five tautological paintings which have been made from the insides of loaves of bread. Mark Aerial Waller's Reversion of the Beast Folk is a film, a piece for fluorescent strip lights, an expanded foam cave, and a selection of masks and drawings of movie icons.
Amikam Toren
Neither Bread nor Painting
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Mark Aerial Waller
Reversion of the Beast Folk
Amikam Toren - Neither Bread nor Painting
This is the first public showing of Amikam Toren's Neither Bread nor Painting,
a group of five tautological paintings which have been made from the insides of
loaves of bread. Having been turned into a fine powder this material, employed
as an unconventional but effective pigment, was mixed with water to produce
paint, then applied to the canvas using both hands. With the canvases flat on
the floor the loaves' crusty exteriors, now resembling the surfaces of shiny
ceramic vessels, were placed upon them and one of these was accordingly
decorated. Neither Bread nor Painting was completed in 1996. In order to
preserve the work it was coated with acrylic medium and resin the following
year.
Amikam Toren has exhibited widely, both internationally and in the UK. His work
was included in the influential survey exhibition Live in Your Head: Concept and
Experiment in Britain 1965-75 (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 2000). Toren's
solo exhibition Clouds in Trousers is currently showing at Imperial College,
London (29th January - 27th February) as part of the programme Artlab 29.
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Mark Aerial Waller - Reversion of the Beast Folk
Mark Aerial Waller's Reversion of the Beast Folk is a film, a piece for
fluorescent strip lights, an expanded foam cave, and a selection of masks and
drawings of movie icons. The film opens with the view from the passenger seat
of a Lamborghini Countach, which screeches through traffic on an endless
highway, passing cars inside and out. Cutting to a barren landscape, two
figures are seen to emerge from behind a rock and meander through the depth of
field. Here Waller, who approaches his work through the reading of classic
literature, employs H.G. Wells' endlessly perverted The Island of Doctor Moreau
as his field of agitation.
Reversion of the Beast Folk concerns the conquest of new territory,
pre-judgement and swift punishment, and the laying down of a New Law. For the
film's soundtrack Waller employs Beethoven's Emperor in collision with
recordings of the camera's own mechanism. The work climazes with Brazilian
Umbanda, music for religious ritual dedicated to the goddess of sex, Pomba Gira,
with the gallery bathed in red fluorescents for the entr'acte.
As well as being an artist interested in producing densely coded filmworks that
are open to a complex range of interpretations Waller also operates The Wayward
Canon, a flexible platform for the critical re-evaluation of cinematic
practices. Recent exhibitions to which he has contributed include Traversees
(Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2002) and Changing Times (Tate
Britain, London 2003).
Image: Still from Reversion of the Beast Folk
Private View: Tue 3 Feb 7pm - 9pm
Open: 4 Feb - 27 Mar, 11am - 6pm Wed - Sun.
t1+2artspace
4 Steward St, London E1. Nearest tube: Liverpool St.