Group show
Group show. A proposition by Lindsey Hanlon
Artists: Karla Black,
Matt Bryans,
Duncan Marquiss,
Jimmy Robert and
Sue Tompkins
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
Louis MacNeice, Snow
Untitled - Works on Paper exhibits the work of four young artists working in Great Britain and Belgium. This exhibition focuses on the elements of their work which are on paper: sculptures, drawings and installations. The medium of paper is taken as the departure point for a show which looks at the thematic relevance of this choice of material, and its connections with the influences of the artists who use it.
The connotations of the paper form return us at once to literature and the written word and within each of the worlds of these artists we see the written word as carrying considerable thematic importance. As much as looking at the work, we find ourselves reading it: we make connections, we peel it apart, take out the pips and see in wonder the plurality and cohesiveness of the structures. Language, in this visual context is both coherent and elusive: there and not there. We see this when we read the titles for Karla Black's sculptures:
Differences are Definite,
The Different,
The Differents and
The Definite
Meaning becomes both within the work and between the works, between titles and their relationships with each other.
Separated and yet the same the words draw us toward and away from the meaning. Similarly Duncan Marquiss' drawings of young girls in 'Self-Invocation' draws us literally back to the image and away from it again - to the title and what it itself invokes.
Sue Tompkins and Jimmy Robert similarly use their own vocabulary to invent the traces of people, ideas and words that evoke everyday life. Language as the ready made features heavily in the way in which we are inclined to interpret their work. Language, in short, is extended and becomes visual.
Language, thus is at the heart of this exhibition. Perhaps it is most clear in the space between the works, in the influences that operate behind them and that result in such minimal yet powerful reflections of artistic capability. Within the 'untitled' of this exhibition lies the true meaning of the title: the necessary composition of a language on behalf of the beholder.
Image: Duncan Marquiss: Nocturne II, pencil on paper (42cm x 29cm)
Art : Concept
16, rue Duchefdelaville - Paris
Opening time: Tue -sat 11-19
Admission free