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14/5/2009

Two Exhibitions

Migros Museum, Zurich

The migros museum für gegenwartskunst is presenting from 16th May – 16th August 2009 two solo exhibitions by Karla Black (born 1972 in Alexandria, lives and works in Glasgow) and Christoph Ruckhäberle (born 1972 in Pfaffenhofen, lives and works in Leipzig). It’s for both artists their first solo exhibition in Switzerland.

Plaster, chalk dust and Vaseline, or substances such as face powder, lipstick and nail varnish make up the raw materials of Scottish artist Karla Black. The ephemeral works – whether transparent cellophane arranged sculpturally to hang from the ceiling, or fragile works of gossamer-fine powder sprinkled onto the floor. Black simultaneously extends the classical notion of sculpture through a process-oriented, performative handling of cultural connotations and untypical materials. Through their colours and materiality, Black’s sculptural works create an extremely subtle effect. The surfaces of some of the objects can be recognised as rough cardboard or sensitively transparent cellophane, other areas are covered by gentle pastel colours. Black’s fragile works are never in a stable condition as they are threatened by persistent decay. The artist seeks to interrupt this natural process in her works, and transform them to obtain a timeless condition as close to perfection as possible. This maintained sovereignty over the art permits the artist to assess the actual condition of the work according to aesthetic criteria and, not unlike a restorer, affect precisely targeted interventions to eliminate the traces of time. Nonetheless, some sculptures have a lifespan only as long as the exhibition itself, after which they are destroyed.

The visual world of the painter Christoph Ruckhäberle is peopled by odd hard-edged figures, standing in front of coloured rhythmic backgrounds. Colourful drawings of faces recall carved masks, composed from a rich and playful vocabulary of forms. These forms, and the wealth of colours in Ruckhäberle’s works, are broken not only by skewed visual angles or perspectival inconsistencies, but also through the use of expressionist and surreal borrowings. For this exhibition, Christoph Ruckhäberle is presenting two groups of works from his most recent output. The numerous drawings of over-long, alienated, coloured faces in the first group bear witness to the artist’s delight in experimentation. The vivid colours, as well as the chiselled and schematic effect of the facial features, lend the faces a mask-like quality. The pictures evidence a freedom in the play of forms, arrangement and alteration of the proportions of the face. The distribution of sharply separated colour fields over the surface of the picture plane reveals Ruckhäberle’s affinity with the linocut, a medium with which the artist has worked for a long time.

Born in Scotland, Karla Black lives and works in Glasgow, where between 1995 and 1999 she obtained her BA in sculpture and in 2004 her Masters degree in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art. Alongside appearances in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the USA are those at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2008), participation in the Brussels Biennial (2008), Art Now at Tate Britain, and the group exhibition Poor Thing (2007) at the Kunsthalle Basel.

Born in Pfaffenhofen, Bavaria, Ruckhäberle studied animated film between 1991 and 1992 at the California Institute of Arts Valencia, and graduated in his Master studies in Leipzig under Prof. Arno Rink. Manifesta 7 in Trentino, Italy (2008), the Life After Death exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2007), Triumph of Painting in the Saatchi Gallery, London (2006), and Mass MoCA, Massachusetts (2005) are some of the numerous venues at which his work has been shown.

Curator of the exhibitions: Heike Munder

CATALOGUES: A monograph on Karla Black will be published in November 2009, as a result of a collaboration between the Kunstverein Hamburg, Modern Art Oxford, and Inverleith House, Edinburgh

For the exhibition by Christoph Ruckhäberle an artist’s book with a text by Heike Munder and an interview with the artist will be published in June 2009.

Press contact: presse@migrosmuseum.ch

migros museum für gegenwartskunst
Limmatstrasse 270 - 8005 Zürich
PUBLIC GUIDED TOURS: Sunday 17th and 31st May, 14th and 28th June, 16th August at 3pm and Thursday 4th June and 13th August at 6.30pm.
OPENING HOURS: Tues / Wed / Fri Midday–6pm, Thurs Midday–8pm, Sat / Sun 11am–5pm. Entrance to the museum is free from 5pm-8pm every Thursday.
BANK HOLIDAYS: The museum will be closed on Whit Monday 1st June. On Thursday 21st May the museum is open from 11am to 5pm.

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