Markus Schinwald / Ariel Schlesinger
dal 4/4/2012 al 4/5/2012
Segnalato da
4/4/2012
Markus Schinwald / Ariel Schlesinger
Yvon Lambert, Paris
His works can seem like minimalistic productions at first sight, but reveal themselves as a complex structure, open to a profusion of possibilities and stories that nourish themselves from our collective memory. Markus Schinwald develops scenarios that do not follow a proper story, with a beginning and an end. On show also an installation by Ariel Schlesinger.
Markus Schinwald
Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce Austrian artist Markus Schinwalds first solo exhibition in Paris.
The exhibition will take place at the Yvon Lambert gallery from the 5 of April to the 5 of May 2012.
Markus Schinwald (born in 1973, lives and works in Vienna) shows a vivid interest in the psychological analysis of space,
in the body, in the strangeness and the discomfort, as well as in the irrational depth of our individual and collective
existence. Through inconstant and shifting works (videos, photographs, puppets, installations, paintings and drawings),
strongly influenced by the show, dance, performance, or even opera and fashion scene, he stages manipulated - or
through physical extents, mechanical prosthesis, accessories and strange clothing - elongated bodies. His works can
seem like minimalistic productions at first sight, but reveal themselves as a complex structure, open to a profusion of
possibilities and stories that nourish themselves from our collective memory. Markus Schinwald develops scenarios that do
not follow a proper story, with a beginning and an end. He takes the spectator in an independent and self-ruling world,
sometimes disturbing, obsessive, and surrealistic.
Stirring art historyʼs myths, psychoanalytic themes and cultural theories, the artist denies all forms of naturalism; his works
are a collection of curiosities that develop an uncommon view of the human being, with a high aesthetic load.
He represented the Austrian pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, with an installation that precisely refers to the existing
space. Inside the pavilion: a narrow, labyrinthine, stifling corridor where Schinwald shows some altered paintings in the
manner of 17th century Dutch paintings, sculptures made of table pieces and “Orient”, an astounding, obsessive film where
a dancing actor tries to take his trapped foot out of a crack in a wall.
In the cohesion of his project at the Venice Biennale, Markus Schinwald presents today a new installation at the Yvon
Lambert gallery, where he plays yet again with the representation and the manipulation of space, time, light and shadow,
where he also causes trouble when amusing himself with the concept of “visible” and “hidden”.
The enormous white wall blocking the gallery space reveals itself to the spectator as a gigantic three-dimensional block, a
truly statuesque object. With evident radicalism, placed in the middle of the space, this parallelepiped shows on long
narrow corridors between the gallery walls and itself. Along these impassable corridors, some of the artistʼs canvases are
hanging, but only a few remain clearly visible.
Theses canvases are part of a master portrait series of the 19 century the artist found, and that he altered by intervening
on the faces, adding masks, prostheses on the mouth, on the eyes or even on some part of the face, without it seeming to
alter the characters identity. A speech that is somehow hampered sometimes comes out of it, as if the hero of the picture
was impeded by the hypocrisy and the insincerity of his condition. The artist raises the question of the body and its
interaction with space, whilst challenging conventions and identity.
In the center of this more statuesque than architectural objet, a slot divides the block in two distinct parts, where with some
perspective, one can observe a large and elegantly shaped sculpture, that looks like it is stuck between the two walls.
Through the mysterious and impassable aspect erected by the sculptural block, its cracks, its full emptiness, its visible then
hidden parts, Markus Schinwald offers here a very personal vision of the unfathomable.
----
Ariel Schlesinger
Act Without
Yvon Lambert is pleased to announce Act Without, the first solo exhibition of Israeli artist Ariel Schlesinger at the Yvon
Lambert gallery in Paris.
Ariel Schlesinger (born in Jerusalem, lives in Berlin and New York ) looks at our reality in a poetic way, deflecting everyday
objects in some discrete subversion. With humor and in an offhand manner, he achieves to insufflate life to those objects,
turning them away from their original purpose, shifting them through subtle transformations.
His work creates a tension between the materiality of ordinary and used objects and their original purpose. He thus unveils
the hidden potential of details we usually pay no attention to. His objects, often carrying somewhat of a trivial sense of
reality, are getting to coexist and are sometimes played in poetic situations, where the distanced view of the art piece gives
way to a feeling of menace, without any rationality. Some of his installations and sculptures show off some objects we
assume are innocent, which in their situation and their association of potentially dangerous objects (gas bottle, broken
glass pieces, flames...) unforeseeably provoke a strong emotional impact. The artist undeniably uses surprise, as well as
the fascination people hold on fire, the explosions, as if the point was to highlight our deepest fears, our helplessness
facing danger.
In his installation Braunschweig door, presented at the Yvon Lambert gallery, the viewer is confronted to a flame, shooting
up from a door. Schlesinger uses emotional mechanisms again, where the reminder of a certain situation in which
normality shifts to chaos takes a different dimension for every person. He shows the idea that normality; our everyday life
can simply turn to a disaster in an instant. The catastrophe seems possible, conceivable, and yet no anxiety comes
through.
Devoted to the construction of machines and low-tech mechanisms, the artist seems to be closer to DIY than to
impeccable machinery. With his piece Act Without, an inexistent poetry seems to emerge through the simplicity of the
mechanism. In a curious three-act choreography, the two chairs from which the work is made move due to a discrete
motorization. A very human aspect bursts from this irregularity, from the harshness of these imperfect models that fall
endlessly.
Also visible in the exhibition I believe in a two states solution, a little table sprinkled in pens and pencils, like abandoned in
the middle of some unfinished work. By looking more closely, one can observe that one of the pencils is actually sculpted
in an incense stick and is consuming slowly in the exhibition space. The title I believe in a two states solution speaks of the
physical reality of the object but lets also betray a political evocation.
This exhibition from Ariel Schlesinger is an exhibition where without being ever visible the body still is everywhere, from a
physical, political, poetic or social point of view.
Ariel Schlesinger est diplômé de la School of Visual Art, New York, et de la Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design de Jerusalem. Parmi ses récentes expositions personnelles: Catastrophe is subjective, Musée du château des ducs de Wurtenberg, Montbéliard, FR (2012) et Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2011. Son travail a été également présenté dans de nombreuses expositions de groupes: Kunstverein Freiburg , Swiss Institute, New York (2011), Gallery Yvon Lambert, New York; and De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam (2010); Hayward Gallery, London (2009); The Young Artists Biennial, Bucharest, Bucharest; and the 5th Jerusalem Biennial, Israel (2008)
For press enquiries please contact Didier Barroso didier@yvon-lambert.com ou +3314271093
Yvon Lambert
108 rue Vieille du Temple - Paris
Opening hours
Tuesday – Friday, 10 AM – 1 PM / 2:30 PM – 7 PM
Saturday, 10 AM – 7 PM