Two exhibitions
dal 17/11/2004 al 15/1/2005
Segnalato da
17/11/2004
Two exhibitions
mullerdechiara, Berlin
'Private Viewing' by the Swedish photographer Maria Hedlund. Her work explores the inevitable transformation of an object that occurs somewhere in the process of being photographed. The strong presence and physicality of Hedlund's photographs is perpetually at odds with their familiar and overtly ordinary subjects. Emerging from David Hatcher's ongoing survey of the illustrative diagrams and schemas to be found on the pages of Western philosophy, 'Oedipal Manoeuvres in the Dark' consists of a constellation of his personal highlights as an array of fluorescent motifs painted directly on to the gallery walls.
Maria Hedlund  Private Viewing
müllerdechiara is pleased to announce the exhibition 'Private Viewing' from
the Swedish photographer, Maria Hedlund. The work of the Swedish
photographer, Hedlund (born 1961 in Västeras, Sweden) explores the
inevitable transformation of an object that occurs somewhere in the process
of being photographed. The strong presence and physicality of Hedlund's
photographs is perpetually at odds with their familiar and overtly ordinary
subjects. The conceptual aspect of her photographs is equally as important
to their visual formality. These photographs are at once passionately
intimate and awkwardly alienating, employing everyday motifs to represent an
instable and ambivalent sense of reality.
With a thorough consideration of size and the positioning of both the
photographer and the viewer, Hedlund's photographs align themselves with the
minimalist tradition. With the selection of light, shadows are undetectable,
and the relative size of the images, the object itself becomes something
that is  at least in form  clearly visible.
At first glance, her pictures do not reveal the topic they deal with, since
the distance chosen by Hedlund is what actually determines how the picture
should be interpreted. She uses the capacity of the photograph to transform
the most common object into something radically strange. Along these lines,
she carried out a photographic investigation in the series 'At My Home', in
which she shows the dirt produced with normal human activity. This dirt
represents both the presence and absence of the individual. By
concentrating and emphasizing the details, Hedlund is effectually initiating
a beautiful transformation of our daily tasks into an ugly and splendidly
grotesque event. The construction of the image and its superficiality is
less important than the story that, in time, the image may tell.
With generous support from the Swedish embassy of Berlin.
________
David Hatcher  Oedipal Manoeuvres in the Dark
müllerdechiara is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Oedipal
Manoeuvres in the Dark by Los Angeles based artist David Hatcher.
Emerging from Hatcher's ongoing survey of the illustrative diagrams and
schemas to be found on the pages of Western philosophy, Oedipal Manoeuvres in
the Dark consists of a constellation of his personal highlights as an array
of fluorescent motifs painted directly on to the gallery walls. Rid of their
textual appendages, labels and other distractions, the resulting
Å’compositions' are grouped according to formal affinities in an
investigation of historical examples of the pictorial representation of
abstract concepts in the West. While the paintings are in part a
tongue-in-cheek critique of the conceptual and post conceptual practices of
recent decades, the legacy of formal abstraction over the last century is
also at play, with hardboiled nods to a tradition stretching from Malevich
to Murakami dotted across the walls.
Resembling the forlorn décor of an abandoned 80s nightclub or a planetarium
polluted by metaphysical kitsch, the resulting installation conflates
centuries of critical thought with aspects of the visual art histories that
such thought accompanied, underscored, or engendered. Monitoring current
conversations about intersections between theory and practice, the
exhibition offers a space to reflect on the efficacy of past and current
approaches to criticality in the visual arts.
'In the afterglow of these elegant but defective conceptual constructions, I
sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between a composition by say,
Immanuel Kant, and an Ikea gift-wrapping design. Matisse's chapel at Vence
was his gift to the Dominican Sisters in the mid 20th Century. By '71,
Rothko's chapel in Houston was a meditative space intended for people of any
faith or tradition. I've recently been thinking about what a comparable
gesture might look like today. Oedipal Manoeuvres in the Dark is a kind of
provisional study along these linesÂthere's a constructive approach to the
aftermath of various theoretical, formal and material histories at work
here, without adherence to party lines. As to what motivates the forms
proliferating in the space, I wonder if they aren't evidence of a kind of
artistic transactionÂif their original formulations could be considered as a
move into the aesthetic sphere on the part of their authors.' (David
Hatcher)
Opening November 18th, 6pm
Exhibition: November 18th, 2004 - January 15th, 2005
Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 7 pm
With generous support from the New Zealand embassy of Berlin.
For further information please contact Sönke Müller or Anne Schmedding at
the gallery:
Tel.: +49-30-39032040
Image: a work by David Hatcher
New York Showroom:
If you are interested in viewing some of the artists works shown at
mullerdechiara in New York please contact Laurie De Chiara ph 646-339-7080. She will be temporarily based in
NYC until January showing a selection of müllerdechiara' artists.
müllerdechiara
Weydingerstr. 10 10178 Berlin