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11/3/2004

Two exhibitions

Galerie Xippas, Paris

Ian Dawson
March 13 - April 17, 2004.

Galerie Xippas is pleased to present British Artist Ian Dawson's debut exhibition in Paris.

In this new body of work, Dawson has melted a variety of rubbish bins all of them rotationally moulded from polyethylene. The manufacturing process involves pouring the molten plastic polymer into a metal mould which is then spun, the centrifugal force coating the walls of the mould with plastic, and solidifying when cool. This process is mimicked in the artist's studio where the objects are suspended and spun while the heat of a blowtorch is administered. The results of both rotations are profoundly different as the bins are distorted and stretched, their previous identity only just intact, and somehow retaining a tenuous grip on one reality while morphing into another.

'Dawson's creative destructions subtly elaborate the various industrial and geological back-stories of plastic. In the beginning dead plants and animals became crude oil under profound terrestrial pressure and geothermal heat. Later, companies made toys and plastic hangers from the processed remains of those organisms then the artist restores some nature to them in the form of accelerated entropy. Dawson efficiently converts his new plastic goods into scrap in an extravagant production of waste.'
David Humphrey, February 2003

In these new works sets of bins are clustered together, a set of office bins hang stalactite like from the ceiling, while a set a bright primary wheelie bins protrude from the wall, the industrial colour coding that signals functionality is re-used and related to an abstract painter's visual experience.

The artist will also present a set of 'spriolator' drawings made with a home-made toy. Made from ‘meccano', this contraption spins a pen in an endless spiral. These dense chaotic and colourful drawings contemplate a vastly elongated cycle like the rotation of the plastic or the endlessly long chemical chains that are plastic polymers. The skewed and obliterated geometry within these drawings are, like the sculptures, frozen moments that highlight and celebrate the irreversible process of decay.

Ian Dawson lives and works in London. He has had exhibitions at Grand Arts, Kansas City, James Cohan Gallery, New York, and Modern Art, London.
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Panos Kokkinias
March 13 - April 17, 2004.

The photographic work of Panos Kokkinias brings together two distinct traditions: on the one hand the careful recording of the features in the everyday environment – people, objects, and spaces – in a quest for a personal identity; on the otherhand, the persistent narration of weird, unexpected stories which explore sexuality or the fear of death. His work thus emerges as a kind of otherworldly genre.

The familiar figures and spaces and the accessible outdoors are retained as a realistic backdrop for the narrative. Inside, however, the eye of the camera acts as an observer of the invisible: it retrieves latent possibilities, as if they were past/future events inscribed in the spaces and the people. The photographic technique contributes to this distortion of reality, exactly because it reproduces it with precision: the obsessive attention to detail, the strong colours and the clear outlines are necessary prerequisites for the imaginary to show through.

Moreover, the shooting distance from the subject and the lighting patterns reinforces, even more than the sense of our voyeuristic witnessing of a story, the certainty that we are brought in contact with the projection of a mystical dynamic. In this way Kokkinias manages to transform the familiar into an unexplored, remote place, at the same time turning his stories into fantasies which may become true at any moment.

Outlook Exhibition Catalogue, 2003

Panos Kokkinias is born 1965 in Athens, Greece. He lives and works in Athens. He studied in New York at SVA (School of Visual Arts) and then went to finish his masters in photography at Yale. He was the student of Gergory Crewdson and Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

Opening hours : Tuesday-Friday 10am-1pm / 2-7pm, Saturday 10-7pm
Free entrance

Galerie Xippas
108 rue Vieille du Temple
75003 Paris - France
tel : + 33 1 40 27 05 55
fax : + 33 1 40 27 07 16

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