Alison Jacques

Piece Unique: Ian Kiaer

22 May - 27 Jun 2009

© Ian Kiaer
Endless House project: Horta/ Van Eetvelde (detail), 2008
Acrylic on paper mounted on taffeta, oil on canvas, cardboard, plastic
PIECE UNIQUE: IAN KIAER
ENDLESS HOUSE PROJECT, HORTA / VAN EETVELDE

22 May – 27 June 2009
Opening Thursday 21 May, 6-8 Pm

“Kiaer often draws from the history of landscape painting and from models of utopian and radical architecture, revealing ways in which they impact on the paradigms of aesthetic contemplation. Vision - the changing models of seeing and being seen, and the underlying philosophical and ideological models of self-imagining and control - could be said to permeate all of Kiaerʼs work.”
Christian Rattemeyer, Ian Kiaer, Landscape and Model, Parkett, no. 80, 2007
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Endless House Project, Horta / Van Eetvelde was initially installed by Ian Kiaer in a Brussels townhouse. The Van Eetvelde House designed by Victor Horta is an art nouveau building. The hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches, and doors are structured around a central open vault. The vault provides a space of attention around which the daily restless movement of the house revolves. Kiaer has used this architectural form as a way into thinking about the quiet space that is particular to painting, the stillness of the medium versus the restlessness of knowledge and comment that surrounds it. The work points to painting’s privilege to be hermetic and leave empty what is empty, resisting our anxiety to prematurely fill it with the justification of words. Kiaerʼs installation was also partly made in response to Kynaston McShineʼs curatorial tenet for the breakthrough exhibition Information (MOMA, New York, 1970), an appraisal of artists working with the excess of facts and scrutiny of the information age. This theme was revisited by Francesco Bonami in the curation of the inaugural exhibition, No Information Available, at Gladstone Gallery, Brussels where this work was first shown in 2008.
Ian Kiaer (born 1971) lives and works in London. Kiaer is currently included in Material Intelligence, Kettleʼs Yard, Cambridge. In September this year he will participate in the 10th Biennale de Lyon. Recent shows include Concrete Island (Room 30), Tate Britain, London (2009); No Information Available, Gladstone Gallery, Brussels and Social Diagrams, Planning Reconsidered, Kunsterhaus, Stuttgart (2008). Past solo shows include The British School at Rome (2005); Ian Kiaer: Art Now, Tate Britain (2003) as well as participation in the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007); Poor Thing, Kunsthalle Basel (2007); the 4th Berlin Biennial (2006); and the 50th Venice Biennale (2005).

THIS EXHIBITION RUNS PARALLEL TO SAUL FLETCHER IN THE MAIN GALLERY SPACE
 

Tags: Saul Fletcher, Ian Kiaer