Tag: Nordenhake
SPENCER FINCH
Galerie Nordenhake has the great pleasure to present an exhibition with new works by US-American artist Spencer Finch, to open during the Gallery Weekend Berlin. Themes uniting the diverse works in the show are the complexities and pleasures of apprehending sensations. Most of the works deal with misperceptions or misapprehensions. They are treated not necessarily as failure but as pleasurable moments hinting at a seeing prior to recognition and rationalisation.
The seduction of misperception is suggested in a group of photographs: in reality representations of cherry blossoms in a pond, they appear as delicate images of clouds in the sky bringing to mind Alfred Stieglitz’ series of abstract photographs “Equivalence”. In another work the white concrete sculptures sitting directly on the gallery floor recall piles of snow as they were ubiquitous in the streets during last winter.
The artist maps the limits of his own field of vision in a series of drawings that compare far peripheral and central vision, but they also contrast linguistic and visual descriptions of colour. Spencer Finch recored the colour of a car rushing by on a highway once it appeared in his field of vision and painted his colour impression with pigments on paper. Like an researcher, he adds a written account of the vehicle’s actual colour and form. The central vision differs from the perception in peripheral areas of the eye in respect to colour and form and proves it as erroneous.
The uncertainty of perception — that there is more to reality than our bodily senses could register — is implyed in the works after false-colour images. The colourful oil pastels look entirely abstract but are in fact truly representational as they render thermograms of the windows in the artist’s studio.
Spencer Finch is known for a multi-layered artistic practice in which he explores the mechanism and mysteries of perception. Many of his poetic and witty works aim at preserving the memory of a sensorial experience, be it a pile of snow or moonlight in Venice. He bases his unconventional and meticulous representations on extended research and rigorous measurement while his art acknowledges the difference and distance of all representation and reinforces the beauty of the fleeting nature of the observed world.
Nordenhake
OWL STRETCHING TIME
JONAS DAHLBERG
JONAS DAHLBERG
Galerie Nordenhake is pleased to announce Jonas Dahlberg’s second solo exhibition in Berlin. Here, the Stockholm based artist presents two recent video installations: “Three Rooms” (2008), View Through a Park, and his related photographic suite “View from a Street” (both 2009), along with his work from 1996-2003, “Safe Zones #1”. His works explore relationships between architectural and psychological space.
The artist is not interested so much in architecture in terms of rooms/enclosures but more as journeys, navigations, negotiations. “Three Rooms” is a 3-channel monitor presentation, depicting three rooms in a home: bedroom, living room and dining room. Over the course of 27 minutes all the objects and furniture dissolve, leaving an empty, lit room with no defining features. Dahlberg has found a way to eliminate objects that is slow and resembles a natural, organic process. The 3 screens work with a narrative structure more closely connected to architecture than film. The viewer moves from screen to screen as moving through rooms in a building.
In “View Through a Park” the viewer follows a single camera movement from the interior of one apartment, through an idyllic city park, to its facing apartment. Set at night, the dreamlike shot travels endlessly between these two buildings, transforming from a non-physical journey for the viewer through the park, to a furtive, intruding gaze within the private spaces. The photographic works suggest a surreptitious inventory and indexing of the exterior buildings. While the film is dreamlike, the photographs, taken at street-level, are grounded and factual. “View from a Street” returns to other themes recurrent in Dahlberg’s work – surveillance and voyeurism.
“Safe Zone’s #1” offers a dialog with these recent works by investigating themes such as the gaze, control and paranoia.
Jonas Dahlberg was born in Uddevalla, Sweden, in 1970, and currently lives and works in Stockholm. He has exhibited widely in many prestigious contexts. Selected solo exhibitions include: Galeria Foksal, Warsaw (2008), Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen (with Jan Mancuska) and Frac Bourgogne, Dijon (2006), Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Bonner Kunstverein. Bonn (with Jan Mancuska) (2005) and Kunstverein Langenhagen (2003). He participated in numerous group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2008), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2007), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Taipei Biennial, Calle Alcala 31, Madrid Spain (2006). He represented Sweden at the 26th Bienal de São Paulo and has participated in the Busan Biennial in 2004, the 50th Venice Biennial in 2003 and Manifesta 4 in 2002.
