Gabi Hamm, Susan Turcot & Adam Adach
11 Dec 2004 - 22 Jan 2005
Arndt & Partner are delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition with drawings and paintings by Gabi Hamm, Susan Turcot and Adam Adach. Although all of them work figuratively, the artists employ very disparate pictorial strategies.
The Canadian artist Susan Turcot presents a number of small, intricate pencil drawings. Her works, usually conceived as thematic series, merge diseccting, calculated examination with an intuitive articulation of the unconscious. Abstract tangles of aggressive, seemingly uncontrolled scribbles are layered across minutely rendered representational scenes and figures. Her ambivalent, sometimes even cruel motifs are based on images from mass media or on actual experiences of the artist. The series Camp Blanc Sablon for example reads like a drawn report about a clear-cut in Canada Susan Tucot recently visited. Employing figuration enables her to topically comment on political issues, however she is always concerned with a break with reality by means of an inner knowledge, to which the drawn line seems particularly susceptible.
Gabi Hamm’s ephemeral and enigmatic oil paintings often depict classical sujets such as landscapes and portraits, while critically questioning the tradition of painting. Recurrent motifs are intimate portraits of girls at the verge of womanhood. Despite their immediate proximity to the viewer, the figures seem unexpectedly unapproachable as they are absorbed in their activities. Moreover, the individuality of the persons and objects represented is often veiled.While rendering her motifs figuratively, the artist creates loose, transparent arrangements of colours, always reflecting abstract modes of seeing as well. Due to the suggestive monochrome of her colours, the glowing, often dramatic light, as well as the translucency of the paint, Gabi Hamm’s scenes breathe an atmosphere that is fantastic and absorbing, recalling tendencies of Romanticism and challenging the imagination of the viewer.
Despite their use of found photographs as sources and their representational style, the oil paintings of the Polish artist Adam Adach serve less as stages for narration, as they are spaces for autonomous arrangements of colour. Accordingly Adam Adach has developed a comprehensive stylistic repertoire in applying paint. While in some of his works featureless blocks of flats and snowcovered landscapes, reminiscent of their socialist past, are drawn with precise, thin lines, in other paintings gestural, broad brushstrokes create opaque sceneries, representing urban recreational areas. In his painting Mère d’Ewa portraying his friend’s mother, who used to be a famous marksman in the seventies, he creates smooth, flat planes of colour that emphasize their photographic source. Adam Adach balances between figuration and colour and comments on pictorial tendencies of the West as much as on socialist figurative painting.
Adam Adach was born in 1962 in Warsaw. He studied Fine Art in Lyon, France, and Paris. He lives and works in Paris and Warsaw. He presented his works in group exhibitions in international institutions, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Musée d’Art Collection, Luxembourg, the Galerie Nationale d’Art – Zacheta, Warsaw, the Méng Collection, Luxembourg, the Yokohoma Civic Art Gallery, Japan, as well as the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Le Magasin, Grenoble. Further he had numerous solo exhibitions, e. g. at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Château des Adhémar, the Galerie Jean Brolly, Paris, or the Centre d’Art Contemporain – Zamek Ujadiwski, Warsaw.
Gabi Hamm was born in 1956 in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Stuttgart, and the Städelschule, Frankfurt / Main, Germany. She lives and works in Frankfurt / Main. She presented solo exhibitions, for example at the Kunstverein Friedrichshafen, Germany, the Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt / Main, the Kabinett, Zürich, Switzerland, as well as the Galerie Konrads, Düsseldorf, Germany. Further her work was included in important group exhibitons, such as deutschemalereizweitausenddrei, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main, Szenenwechsel XX, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, or Figuracões, Galeria Mário Sequeira, Praga, Portugal.
Susan Turcot was born in 1966 in Montréal, Canada. She studied Fine Art and Philosophy at the Middlesex University, London, and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, Netherlands. She lives and works in London and Quebec. Besides solo exhibitions, e. g. at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Canada, Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Gallery Helga de Alvaer, Madrid, Ursula Walbröl, Düsseldorf, Germany, and the Shedhalle, Zürich, Switzerland, she participated in numerous group exhibitions in institutions, such as the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, the Fundación ICO, Madrid, the Borusian Kültür ve Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey, the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany, or De Chiara, New York.
© Image by Adam Adach
Mère D`Ewa, 2004, oil on canvas, 53 x 73cm
The Canadian artist Susan Turcot presents a number of small, intricate pencil drawings. Her works, usually conceived as thematic series, merge diseccting, calculated examination with an intuitive articulation of the unconscious. Abstract tangles of aggressive, seemingly uncontrolled scribbles are layered across minutely rendered representational scenes and figures. Her ambivalent, sometimes even cruel motifs are based on images from mass media or on actual experiences of the artist. The series Camp Blanc Sablon for example reads like a drawn report about a clear-cut in Canada Susan Tucot recently visited. Employing figuration enables her to topically comment on political issues, however she is always concerned with a break with reality by means of an inner knowledge, to which the drawn line seems particularly susceptible.
Gabi Hamm’s ephemeral and enigmatic oil paintings often depict classical sujets such as landscapes and portraits, while critically questioning the tradition of painting. Recurrent motifs are intimate portraits of girls at the verge of womanhood. Despite their immediate proximity to the viewer, the figures seem unexpectedly unapproachable as they are absorbed in their activities. Moreover, the individuality of the persons and objects represented is often veiled.While rendering her motifs figuratively, the artist creates loose, transparent arrangements of colours, always reflecting abstract modes of seeing as well. Due to the suggestive monochrome of her colours, the glowing, often dramatic light, as well as the translucency of the paint, Gabi Hamm’s scenes breathe an atmosphere that is fantastic and absorbing, recalling tendencies of Romanticism and challenging the imagination of the viewer.
Despite their use of found photographs as sources and their representational style, the oil paintings of the Polish artist Adam Adach serve less as stages for narration, as they are spaces for autonomous arrangements of colour. Accordingly Adam Adach has developed a comprehensive stylistic repertoire in applying paint. While in some of his works featureless blocks of flats and snowcovered landscapes, reminiscent of their socialist past, are drawn with precise, thin lines, in other paintings gestural, broad brushstrokes create opaque sceneries, representing urban recreational areas. In his painting Mère d’Ewa portraying his friend’s mother, who used to be a famous marksman in the seventies, he creates smooth, flat planes of colour that emphasize their photographic source. Adam Adach balances between figuration and colour and comments on pictorial tendencies of the West as much as on socialist figurative painting.
Adam Adach was born in 1962 in Warsaw. He studied Fine Art in Lyon, France, and Paris. He lives and works in Paris and Warsaw. He presented his works in group exhibitions in international institutions, such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Musée d’Art Collection, Luxembourg, the Galerie Nationale d’Art – Zacheta, Warsaw, the Méng Collection, Luxembourg, the Yokohoma Civic Art Gallery, Japan, as well as the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Le Magasin, Grenoble. Further he had numerous solo exhibitions, e. g. at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Château des Adhémar, the Galerie Jean Brolly, Paris, or the Centre d’Art Contemporain – Zamek Ujadiwski, Warsaw.
Gabi Hamm was born in 1956 in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Stuttgart, and the Städelschule, Frankfurt / Main, Germany. She lives and works in Frankfurt / Main. She presented solo exhibitions, for example at the Kunstverein Friedrichshafen, Germany, the Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt / Main, the Kabinett, Zürich, Switzerland, as well as the Galerie Konrads, Düsseldorf, Germany. Further her work was included in important group exhibitons, such as deutschemalereizweitausenddrei, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main, Szenenwechsel XX, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, or Figuracões, Galeria Mário Sequeira, Praga, Portugal.
Susan Turcot was born in 1966 in Montréal, Canada. She studied Fine Art and Philosophy at the Middlesex University, London, and the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, Netherlands. She lives and works in London and Quebec. Besides solo exhibitions, e. g. at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Canada, Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Gallery Helga de Alvaer, Madrid, Ursula Walbröl, Düsseldorf, Germany, and the Shedhalle, Zürich, Switzerland, she participated in numerous group exhibitions in institutions, such as the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, the Fundación ICO, Madrid, the Borusian Kültür ve Sanat, Istanbul, Turkey, the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany, or De Chiara, New York.
© Image by Adam Adach
Mère D`Ewa, 2004, oil on canvas, 53 x 73cm