calendario eventi  :: 

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3/9/2008

Two exhibitions

Gimpel Fils, London

Carolina Raquel Antich
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

In her new body of work, Carolina Raquel Antich reminds viewers of the magic and mystery of childhood. Into Flower recalls the strange mixture of fear and excitement captured by Frances Hodgson Burnett in her book, "The Secret Garden" first published in 1911. Antich's paintings echo the private, mysterious and often brutal world of The Secret Garden, with its animosities and joyous discoveries. Although she does not directly illustrate the book, much like its protagonists Mary and Colin, her subjects are part caught between two realms, reality and reverie.

Flowers are the most apparent element in these works: flowers of immediate intensity, whether alone against a black background, or held in a bouquet. Behind these almost decorative elements, children hide themselves, shy suddenly, or perhaps taken by a sort of reserve. Ophelia seems to vanish among the water-lilies of a mild pool which only she knows. Is she perhaps a flower? In another canvas, a crepuscular garden, boundless but tenderly protective, is the scene for a romantic rendezvous. In The Women's Land, the most explicitly narrative painting of the series, young Amazons guard a just conquered land, a geography of constantly changing contours in which nothing has yet come into flower.

The world Antich depicts in these paintings is intentionally hyper-real, both eccentric and highly meditative. Underneath her apparently simple surfaces, she offers the viewer a profound critique on the division between child and adulthood. Her children seek to physically and emotionally adjust to the adult world while her adult characters retain a childlike demeanor, which at time makes it difficult to distinguish their gender and age. This uncertainty makes us wonder: are these in fact adults or are we still observing children imitating adults? Ambiguity prevails as Antich invites us to peer into and explore her version of a playful but perplexing world.

This is Carolina Raquel Antich's second solo exhibition with Gimpel Fils. Born in Rosario, Argentina, she lives and works in Venice, Italy. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, Japan and The United States. She is currently exhibiting in the Quadriennale di Roma, Rome, Italy. Exhibitions in Autumn 2008 include: Those Strange Children at the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, USA; Variation & Revision: Low Tech/New Tech in Contemporary Videos, at Marymount Manhattan College Hewitt Gallery, New York. Antich was a 2007 Illy Prize finalist at Art Rotterdam and she was shortlisted for the Cisneros Foundation Commission 2008 in Miami, USA. In 2005 she was a finalist in the Prize for Young Italian Art at the 51st Edition Venice Biennale. Her work is in public and private collections in Europe and the US, most notably the Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami; The Haudenschild Collection, La Jolla; Deutsche Bank Milan; and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice.

.......................... Caroline McCarthy
New Work (Luxury)

Caroline McCarthy utilises everyday objects and materials to create works of art that consider artificial systems of value, taste and economic exchange. For her exhibition, New Work (Luxury) McCarthy presents a new series of work combining the symbolism of a seventeenth century still life painting with coloured toilet paper. The works combine allegorical messages on the dangers of excess and desire found in historical still life paintings with ordinary and ubiquitous toilet paper and the socio-economic divisions epitomised by the 'Luxury' and 'Economy' products found in our supermarkets.

Nothing is quite as it seems in McCarthy's work. English Breakfast (Luxury) is, at first glance a photograph of a plate of bacon, eggs and black pudding. However, on closer inspection it becomes apparent that McCarthy has moulded and shaped the scene using wet toilet paper in the various colours of a luxury brand. Making an English breakfast scene out of toilet paper is at once baffling and humorous. Wet sheets of paper are layered to make different colours, the surfaces of the food are uneven and textured, undermining the pictorial illusion by revealing the material with which they are made. In this work, McCarthy has used toilet paper as paint whilst maintaining its fragility and materiality. The knowledge of what toilet paper is used for when looking at the sculpted foodstuffs in English Breakfast (Luxury) becomes comic: the product being used at the start of the digestive system rather than at the end.

The photographs From The Vanitas Range: White (Value), and From The Vanitas Range: Sea Blue (Luxury) take the idea of the historical still life a step further, each depicting a skull sculpted from a four-pack of toilet paper. The perversity of the memento mori made from toilet paper makes the mundane symbolic. The anamorphic skull of Holbein's The Ambassadors casting its shadow over these works; In Holbein's work the skull was included as a reminder that death is the great leveller, an event that does not take account of worldly achievements or possessions. The skull as a warning against prioritising wealth and property is critiqued in McCarthy's photographic work where the use of Luxury and Value ranges directly impact on not only the proportions of the final image but also its edition size; the Luxury works come in an exclusive edition of three, while the Value range in a more readily available edition of ten. This concept of the economic versus functional value of the consumer (art) product is made explicit in McCarthy's new bronze sculptures, cast from packs of Luxury and Value toilet paper.

Caroline McCarthy was born in Dublin in 1971. She studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin from 1989-1994 and has been based in London since completing her MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, in 1998. She has exhibited widely, with recent solo shows at Hoet Bekaert Gallery, Ghent (2008), Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf (2007), and Parker's Box, New York (2006). Group shows have included Art Futures, Bloomberg Space, London (2007), Metropolis Rise: New Art from London, Shanghai (2006), To Be Continued... Helsinki Kunsthalle (2005), and Siar 50- fifty years of Contemporary Irish Art, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2005).

Gimpel Fils
30 Davies Street - London
Gallery opening hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5.30pm, Sat 11am - 4pm
Free admission

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