calendario eventi  :: 

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26/3/2007

Two exhibitions

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

Arturo Herrera

Ikon presents the first major solo exhibition in the UK by Venezuelan artist Arturo Herrera (b. Caracas, 1959, lives and works in New York and Berlin), including collage, work on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting, photography, and felt wall hangings. For Ikon, Herrera will create his first ever animation piece, which will be projected on an impressive scale across three gallery walls. Together with recent and older works it gives rise to a colourful and visually complex show, providing a detailed insight into the artist’s practice to date.

Herrera’s work contains a rich layering of associative meanings, stemming from a retrieval of popular childhood imagery mixed with elements of modernism, from abstraction to surrealism. These ambiguous pieces reference memory and recollection, a playful eroticism and develop new meaning through the collage process, creating hybrid images. Recurring Disney motifs, of castles, dwarves and winding roads; all familiar yet abstracted, morph into painterly gesture. Yet unlike the accidental beauty of dripped paint inherent to ‘action painting’, the comparable shapes in Herrera’s work are formed by the meticulous cutting of paper and felt. This technique results in linear, abstract images of an enticing precision that beckon the viewer into fantastical landscapes.

Herrera’s animation is developed out of a characteristic fragmentation through cutting and splicing. Details from existing works are juxtaposed to create dense networks of painted, printed and cut-out paper comprising an ambitious collage animation in black and white. Set to the music of Stravinsky, and composed of a re-appropriation of early animation drawing, Herrera’s ambiguous hybrid creation cleverly alludes to Fantasia; Disney’s cartoon masterpiece.

Other works in the exhibition will include delicate paper filigree; large laser-cut felt hangings and new sculptures. An alluringly delicate wall drawing will be created on a large scale in the first floor galleries, using a traditional pin-prick and powder pigment technique to create dusted ephemeral images that, despite their fluid nature incorporate a striking linear precision. At the bottom of the wall, a bright powdery residue betrays the artistic process.

Arturo Herrera will be complemented by an exhibition of photography and drawings at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Ikon gratefully acknowledges the support of the Goethe Institut.

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Claudia Losi
Aria Mobile

Ikon presents work by Italian artist Claudia Losi, for the first time in the UK. The artist’s craft-based practice is concerned with life processes, mimicked by artistic process, often involving a gradual accumulation of small gestures towards a complex, multi-layered result. By allowing a moment for things to be observed, her modest subjects acquire a certain gravity, touching on the fragile ecological balance that sustains human existence.

Aria Mobile, 2006 (Moving Air) is a small ball that the artist has created, over five years, by winding layers of thread. The sumptuous outer layer has been skilfully embroidered with taupe-coloured silk yarn, outlining profiles of the continents and the passage of high-altitude winds around the globe. This work is an artifact, intensely complex both physically and in terms of meaning, through allusions to the process of its’ making.

The work is based on Japanese Mari balls, which were introduced over 500 years ago by China. Traditionally these are a symbolic new year’s gift from mother to daughter, intricately embroidered with geometric patterns. For Aria Mobile, Losi sourced coloured thread from over the world, and each progressive layer of the ball represents a particular time in which she was in a certain place. It is imbued with the memory and circumstances of its progressive growth. The artist collaborated with the writer Matteo Meschari at each stage of the object’s creation to reveal something of this durational character. His prose will be displayed alongside the ball in a beautifully illustrated work on paper.

Claudia Losi will also be showing work at Sharjah Biennale, curated by Ikon’s director, Jonathan Watkins. Here she will show a collaborative textile work, in which a group of Pakistani artisans from Sharjah will embroider marine creatures over enormous pieces of padded silk, which will be displayed on the ground to be viewed from three towering structures.

For more information and images please contact Ikon’s Press and PR Officer, Anna Pike on
T: 0121 248 0708 F: 0121 2480709 E: a.pike@ikon-gallery.co.uk

Image: Claudia Losi Aria Mobile 2006, Silk embroidery

Press Preview, Tuesday 27 March, 12-8pm

Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1 2HS
Ikon is open Tuesday – Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays, 11am - 6pm.
Admission is free.

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