Florian Schmidt
17 Jan - 08 Mar 2014
FLORIAN SCHMIDT
Skip
17 January - 8 March 2014
From January 16 to March 8 the Galerie Andreas Huber will be showing new works by the Austrian artist Florian Schmidt under the title “Skip.”
“Skip,” meaning to omit or to jump over, is both the title of the exhibition and the title of the central six-part series. Observing the objects placed in white, three-dimensional wooden frames, the question “Painting or sculpture?” is never far away. The reflex to categorize is strong, and challenging its validity is an important topic for Florian Schmidt. His works blend two-dimensional and sculptural elements, and the ways of working in sculpture and painting. For him it is not a matter of clear definitions, but of examining the conditions and the boundaries of painting and sculpture, those classical media of art.
Industrially manufactured canvasses serve as the starting point for “Skip.” An incision has been made on the backs of the frames, either horizontally or vertically, and then they were bent. The traditional flat surface becomes a spatial image carrier, onto which are applied three-dimensional arrangements of folded black cardboard.
Florian Schmidt is a utilizer and a transformer. The development of his works runs in cycles, his titles, parts, and materials stand in close connection, are repeated and altered from series to series. For the ornamental compositions of his small-format works “Annex (Skip)” (30x23cm), he uses the small wedges of wood that are delivered with prefabricated canvasses. The patterns that are compiled from them, kept in black and white, shift an otherwise hidden, technical device into the foreground of the image. By making visible something that was marginal, he creates a moment of lightness, which is characteristic for how Schmidt engages with an abstraction that is otherwise usually brought forth with a serious gesture. In its composition, which consists of omissions and line skips, this work plays with the title of the exhibition.
“Skip” in the sense of “reduce” is also relevant to the series “Armature”. Leftover scraps of cotton and canvas stretched onto canvas frames and embedded in 8 cm deep frames form the basis of the works. From the upper and lower borders of the image, the surface of the image is then overlaid with folded cardboard. Florian Schmidt further constricts the remaining visible part of the canvas with black bars and colored pieces of cardboard. A new composition emerges through the process of reduction, and again the image eludes clear categorization as either painting or sculpture.
Hans-Peter Wipplinger in the current catalog on Florian Schmidt, which will be presented at Galerie Andreas Huber on January 18: “If one wishes to reduce the reception of Schmidt’s work to one dominant artistic phenomenon, it is ultimately the question of the accord or the dissociation of traits of form and color, which is meant to encourage the observer to reflect on surfaces and spatial depth, on being and semblance, on the predictable and the unpredictable, and not least on the visible and the concealed.”
Skip
17 January - 8 March 2014
From January 16 to March 8 the Galerie Andreas Huber will be showing new works by the Austrian artist Florian Schmidt under the title “Skip.”
“Skip,” meaning to omit or to jump over, is both the title of the exhibition and the title of the central six-part series. Observing the objects placed in white, three-dimensional wooden frames, the question “Painting or sculpture?” is never far away. The reflex to categorize is strong, and challenging its validity is an important topic for Florian Schmidt. His works blend two-dimensional and sculptural elements, and the ways of working in sculpture and painting. For him it is not a matter of clear definitions, but of examining the conditions and the boundaries of painting and sculpture, those classical media of art.
Industrially manufactured canvasses serve as the starting point for “Skip.” An incision has been made on the backs of the frames, either horizontally or vertically, and then they were bent. The traditional flat surface becomes a spatial image carrier, onto which are applied three-dimensional arrangements of folded black cardboard.
Florian Schmidt is a utilizer and a transformer. The development of his works runs in cycles, his titles, parts, and materials stand in close connection, are repeated and altered from series to series. For the ornamental compositions of his small-format works “Annex (Skip)” (30x23cm), he uses the small wedges of wood that are delivered with prefabricated canvasses. The patterns that are compiled from them, kept in black and white, shift an otherwise hidden, technical device into the foreground of the image. By making visible something that was marginal, he creates a moment of lightness, which is characteristic for how Schmidt engages with an abstraction that is otherwise usually brought forth with a serious gesture. In its composition, which consists of omissions and line skips, this work plays with the title of the exhibition.
“Skip” in the sense of “reduce” is also relevant to the series “Armature”. Leftover scraps of cotton and canvas stretched onto canvas frames and embedded in 8 cm deep frames form the basis of the works. From the upper and lower borders of the image, the surface of the image is then overlaid with folded cardboard. Florian Schmidt further constricts the remaining visible part of the canvas with black bars and colored pieces of cardboard. A new composition emerges through the process of reduction, and again the image eludes clear categorization as either painting or sculpture.
Hans-Peter Wipplinger in the current catalog on Florian Schmidt, which will be presented at Galerie Andreas Huber on January 18: “If one wishes to reduce the reception of Schmidt’s work to one dominant artistic phenomenon, it is ultimately the question of the accord or the dissociation of traits of form and color, which is meant to encourage the observer to reflect on surfaces and spatial depth, on being and semblance, on the predictable and the unpredictable, and not least on the visible and the concealed.”