Anselm Reyle
dal 20/1/2006 al 25/3/2006
Segnalato da
20/1/2006
Anselm Reyle
Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich
The artist has immersed the visitors in a room painting of neon colours, confronted them with large-scale abstract paintings that also tie his works into an art-historical and Swiss context by his allusion to canvases by Ferdinand Hodler or Fernand Leger. Reyle has composed an ambivalent field, which has taken on the form of an overwrought, perverted exhibition of modern art, perhaps capable for this very reason of being constructive for the autonomy of the objects.
Ars Nova
The works by German artist Anselm Reyle have in the last four years,
especially within in the context of re-examining modernism, been assimilated
by a wide range of younger artists. With the exhibition Ars Nova in the
Kunsthalle Zurich, the artist presents himself for the first time in a
one-man Swiss show.
He has immersed the visitors in a room painting of neon
colours, confronted them with large-scale abstract paintings that also tie
his works into an art-historical and Swiss context by his allusion to
canvases by Ferdinand Hodler (Sunset on Lake Geneva, 1915) or Fernand Le'ger
(Les deux figures nues sur fond rouge, 1923, in the Kunstmuseum Basel).
Other art-historical kicks-offs can be found in the abstract-fractal works
by the painter Otto Freundlich, but also in the African sculpture that is
repeatedly associated with modernism, whose presence Reyle allows in the
form of a chrome-plated version of a flea-market carved sculpture enlarged
to giant-size and the floor sculpture that dazzles by its use of all mediums
and colors made from a heap of found neon tubes. Reyle has composed an
ambivalent field, which has taken on the form of an overwrought, perverted
exhibition of modern art, perhaps capable for this very reason of being
constructive for the autonomy of the objects.
Ars Nova, the strange and inappropriately highbrow sounding title that
points to another interpretation and production time and that Anselm Reyle
chose for his exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zurich and its accompanying
publication, was originally the name in the Middle Ages for a new theory of
music. In the meantime it is used for countless music labels, orchestra
associations, rather doubtful artists groups, for computer software, a
furniture collection and precisely for an artist¹s paint brand that Anselm
Reyle uses for his works. 'New Art' as the title of a contemporary
exhibition, of a contemporary art catalogue, of a contemporary artist is
something that disorients our perceptual intake just about as much as a
first encounter with the works of Anselm Reyle itself.
Anselm Reyle¹s paintings, material pictures, sculptures and ready-made
objects out of everyday articles (again and again lamps and vases, but also
articles from a non-domestic environment) and his installations composed
from all these work elements remind the viewer at first of the whole
art-historical repertoire for inventing abstract images: of the seductive
machinery of the Pop and art print culture (see Vasarely), just as much as
of the good taste of modernism that has been domesticated into an everyday
design that, now together with clever lighting solutions, is extolled in
magazines for interior decoration.
Silver foil, neon colours, mirrors, a chrome finish, neon tubes Anselm
Reyle¹s works entangle the viewer in their surface and immerse him in an
ambience of colour and light. For which Reyle produces stripe paintings,
which quote the TV test picture as much as American Expressionism. He
playfully skips through the art-historical pictorial versions of the
monochrome, that of the drip-and-pour paintings formulated by chance, as
much as Pop fusions of high and lowbrow and the diverse typologies of
sculpture. And naturally he does this in every format: handy dimensions for
domestic consumption all the way to the oversized for the art or public
context. All of which, in addition, is 'fabricated' in the seemingly dated
context of an artist¹s studio peopled by assistants.
A practice that recalls
the workshops of an historical type of artist, the serialism of Minimal Art,
as well as the self-important airs of painting in the 1980s and the
industrialised art production of the 1990s. In view of the works by Anselm
Reyle and all his epoch-contradicting insignias we can hardly resist the
disagreeable fascination that occurs because the discrediting of abstract
art has so taken hold of our perception as much as has a general exhaustion
with postmodern quotations which, exactly because of an intensified
ambivalence, can now become productive for a present-day concept.
Kunsthalle Zurich thanks:
Prasidialdepartement der Stadt Zurich, Luma Stiftung, Deutsche Bank
Stiftung, DaimlerChrysler
Catalogue:
A 240 page catalogue will accompany the exhibition. The publication which
acts as an artist book, was manufactured with a complicated printing process
in order to properly illustrate the intensive neon colours of Anselm Reyle's
works. There will be texts by Bruce Hainley and Dominic Eichler and an
introduction by Beatrix Ruf. The catalogue is being published by Kunsthalle
Zurich and distributed throughout Switzerland by JRP-Ringier Kunstverlag.
Public guided tours:
New: Sunday tours at 2 pm respectively: 22.1. (Beatrix Ruf) / 19.2. / 12.3.
(Samuel Leuenberger)
Lunch time guided tours: Wednesdays at 12.30 pm: 1.2. / 1.3 / 22.3. (Samuel
Leuenberger)
Our education and tour program is supported by Swiss Re.
Opening: January 20
Kunsthalle Zurich
Limmatstr. 270 - Zurich
Hours:
Tues/Wed/Fri 12-6pm, Sat/Sun 11am-5 pm, Thurs 12-8 pm, closed on Mondays