Month: March 2007

"Von Welten und Werken / Of worlds and works"

Séverine Hubard*
Artists talk: April 15th 2007, 5 p.m.

Duration of the exhibition: March 15th — April 31st 2007

The exhibition “Von Welten und Werken” of the artists Nathalie Grenzhaeuser (born 1969, Stuttgart) and Séverine Hubard (born 1977, Lille) combines two contemporary positions which deal with landscapes and public space in different artistic media. The photographer Nathalie Grenzhaeuser shows the new series “Die Konstruktion der Stillen Welt / The construction of the silent world”, commenced during a two month trip on the arctic archipelago Spitzbergen. The installation, developed on-site, of the sculptor Séverine Hubard corresponds dialogically to the exhibition space and to the photographs of Nathalie Grenzhaeuser.

The artist Nathalie Grenzhaeuser deals with the perception of landscapes. Deserts, deserted industrial scenery, orphaned public spaces and landscapes are recurrent subjects with which the artist tries to fathom the relation between men and nature. The “emptiness” and apparent scantiness of this landscapes which give space for a dialogue between associativity and memory are constitutive Grenhaeuser’s work.On her travel the artist finds the basic material for her photographs.
Most of the time Grenzhaeuser photographs locations reminding of stage settings which are familiar through their incisive shape and charged symbolically through their history. Those are often fragile landscapes (the Arctic) grasped in a cultural historical flux.Even though the photographs appear to be realistic, they are no documentary images. The works are developed rather in a pictorial approach. Derived from photographic sketches, particular moments and parts of a landscape were woven together with digital editing or were freely invented. The place of origin is transformed in many steps and a new location of special quality is developing. Grenzhaeuser?s photographs show a world that is related to the real but that appears like a dream or a parallel world.The new series “Die Konstruktion der Stillen Welt” broaches the issue of the arctic landscape. The works refer to the history of coal mining, the change of the arctic landscape as well as their cultural-historical and emotional importance.
The sculptor Séverine Hubard became known through space-consuming installations and interventions in exhibition- and public space. In her exemplary, futuristic miniature cities the artist is dealing with existing architecture while at the same time she is referring to the surrounding public space. Hubard in her works broaches the issue of the artificial transformation of world through (constructional) interventions of men to nature which is hard neither to impede nor to reverse.The public space constructed by Séverine Hubard is not created for men. The clean white surfaces allow no admission. There is no “living space” for natural life-forms in Hubard?s world of modules. The hybrid constructions of Hubard seem quasiaesthetical through their geometrical, module-like skyline, but contain certain replications: the
“danger” to proliferate rampantly in the exhibition space and to absorb it. For her installations hubard uses discarded doors and windows, applies furniture, shelves, wooden plates and battens which she merges – in precisely constructed modules – to miniature cities. Through the geometrical arrangement of the different elements a tension is created
between order and chaos, demolition and construction.The artist integrates everyday found footage and non-artistic materials in her works, which seem quasi chaotic and quasi mathematical reminding of dadaistic works, for example Schwitter?s “Merzbau”.In the exhibition “Von Welten und Werken” the artist develops an installation in situ which is dealing with the alteration of the exhibition space and is thereby interacting with the photographs of

Nathalie Grenzhaeuser.

Tue – Fr 11 a.m. — 6 p.m.
Sa 11 a.m. — 2 p.m.
and by arrangement*

Messen / fairs:

CIRCA Puerto Rico 30.03.-02.04.2007
ART Chicago 27.04.- 30.04.2007
LOOP Barcelona 31.05.-02.06.2007

Galerie | Anita Beckers | Frankfurt

Frankenallee 74
D-60327 Frankfurt / Main

Tel (0)69-73 9009 67
Fax (0)69-73 9009 68
info@galerie-beckers.de

  • BECKERS

    • Michael Bauer


    Jack Hanley Gallery is pleased to announce the first US solo exhibition of the work of Michael Bauer: Basho’s Friends. Born in Erkelenz, Denmark in 1973, Bauer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Braunschweig, and in 2002, co-founded the exhibition space BROTHERSLASHER Cologne with Tim Berresheim. Bauer’s paintings appear both intuitively spontaneous and carefully contrived, where haphazard forms emerge with playful sophistication, balancing between organic aberration and whimsical design.

    For his debut in San Francisco, Bauer will present a series of paintings reminiscent of the bizarre anthropomorphic portraits of 16th century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, where figurative composites are suggested through abstraction and design. Seemingly impulsive drips and washes are arranged in an innate manner to create grotesque and distorted bodily forms. Bauer uses the qualities of abstract painting to deviate from the classical standards of representational portraiture, and consequently offers deformity as a platform for indisputable beauty.

    Michael Bauer has had solo exhibits at Hotel in London, and Galerie Hammelehle and Ahrens in Cologne. Bauer’s work has also been included in the exhibitions Figure-Five Position at Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Michael Bauer and Steffie Popp at Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam, and at Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles. Bauer currently lives and works in Cologne.

  • Jack Hanley