Merlin James
dal 16/9/2013 al 9/11/2013
Segnalato da
16/9/2013
Merlin James
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Signal Box. The show highlights the artist's oeuvre by mixing recent paintings with ones ranging back as far as the early 1980s. It arranges them around several recurrent motifs and topoi, such as landscapes, sex and interieurs and thus presents a body work that is to be understood simultaneously, not chronologically.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art's fall program is all about painting:
Besides the group exhibition PAINTING FOREVER! KEILRAHMEN ("stretchers"),
KW presents SIGNAL BOX, the first major solo exhibition by the British
painter Merlin James in Germany.
The show highlights the artist’s oeuvre by mixing recent paintings with
ones ranging back as far as the early 1980s. It arranges them around
several recurrent motifs and topoi, such as landscapes, sex and interieurs
and thus presents a body work that is to be understood simultaneously, not
chronologically.
The eponymous signal boxes are, besides other small vernacular buildings
of uncertain vintage – mills, homesteads, hotels, factories, and
tower-blocks – ubiquitous in James’ works, either represented in paint or
as model buildings incorporated into the work. At the same time, each work
can be considered a signal box in itself, with which James addresses the
viewer, playing consciously with the paintings’ semantic elements.
James doesn’t limit himself in either genre or technique, but fathoms
disparate imagery including heads, animals, and emblematic figures.
Expansive spaces may be evoked, suggesting dreamscapes, memoryscapes,
topographies seen in passing. Hair, sawdust and other materials are
deployed, and the very physical surfaces are often punctuated with holes.
Recent works may be semi-transparent, and feature integral picture-frames.
Often alluding to earlier art, the painter’s sense of the uncertain limits
of genre and convention is central to his project. Yet SIGNAL BOX also
charts James’ distance from the perversity of much postmodernism,
revealing a lyrical apprehension of the world embodied in restless
aesthetic experiment. Combining stylistic modes and degrees of abstraction
and representation, he explores and challenges the framework of painting
while equally finding new perspectives from which to address the world.
James has published art criticism for over two decades, often re-examining
lesser-known figures in Modernism. His art writing relates closely to his
own painting, in its explorations of alternative and overlooked
territories.
Born in Cardiff/UK in 1960, Merlin James currently lives and works in
Glasgow. Recent solo exhibitions include: MERLIN JAMES, Parasol Unit,
London 2013; SEX PAINTINGS, OHIO, Glasgow 2013; IN THE GALLERY, Douglas
Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2011; MERLIN JAMES, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
2010; FRAME PAINTINGS, Mummery & Schnelle, London 2010; BIRDS, PLACES AND
OTHER THINGS, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin 2008.
The cultural programs of KW Institute for Contemporary Art are made
possible with the support of the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate
Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.
Press Contact
Henriette Sölter
T +49 30 243459 42
presse@kw-berlin.de
Opening: Tuesday, 17.9.13, 18–21 h
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
Germany 10117 Berlin
www.kw-berlin.de
www.facebook.com/KWInstituteforContemporaryArt
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Opening hours: Wed–Mo 12–19 h, Thur 12–21 h, Tue closed
Admission: 6 Euro; reduced 4 €; Thursday-Evening-Ticket 4 € (19–21 h)