Volker Eichelmann / Florian Schmidt
01 - 31 Jul 2010
VOLKER EICHELMANN / FLORIAN SCHMIDT
“Proposals”
1 - 31 July 2010
ANCIENT & MODERN presents a two-person show of collages by Volker Eichelmann alongside a series of new paintings and construction by Florian Schmidt.
The 18th and early 19th-centuries saw classical country house architecture augmented by the fanciful inclusion of ‘follies and grottoes’ incorporated into the surrounding landscape. Taking their cue from Italianate and French landscape architecture, these structures often featured faux Roman or Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys and medieval castles, the result of wilful and romantic endeavour, made famous in London by Alexander Pope at Twickenham: “...When you shut the Doors of this Grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous Room, a Camera Obscura, on the walls of which all the objects of the River, Hills, Woods, and Boats, are forming a moving Picture...”.
The most visionary architecture seems destined to remain on the page however as, simultaneously, the ingenious German artist and sometime architect Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) created an imagined expressionist architecture in sketches; while the ‘Alpine Architecture’ (1919) of Bruno Taut (1880-1938) proposed wholly utopian visions whose graphic qualities evoke a mysticism that would be made moribund by bricks and mortar.
Volker Eichelmann’s ‘Proposals for Sculptures and Buildings’, numbering over six hundred in all, contain the vision rather than the pragmatics required for the realisation of a sculpture, building or structure. Assembled from magazine cut-outs, the thirty presented here eschew production for the proposal, in turn interrogating, cajoling, questioning and celebrating past imaginings of the future; the project instituting itself as a veritable archive of paper architecture.
Florian Schmidt’s painted and often torn surfaces expose their own underlying architecture, as if in the process of being dismantled and reassembled. In an attempt to establish a language of their own, they acknowledge their formal mid-20th-century art historical precedents while celebrating the simple and essential acts of making, Here, Florian’s series of seven new paintings are shown within his own architectural intervention that subdivides the gallery space into itself.
For more information & images please contact mail@ancientandmodern.org
Exhibition Preview: Wednesday 30 June, 6-8pm
Exhibition open Wednesdays - Saturdays, 12-6pm and by appointment
Notes on the artists:
Florian Schmidt (b.1980, Raabs/Thaya, Austria) lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. He studied at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (1999-2006) and Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Hamburg (2002-3) and has exhibited recently at Ben Kaufmann, Berlin and Independent, New York (2010), Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan (2009), New Galerie de France, Paris and Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2008). Group shows include Die dritte Dimension, New Galerie, Paris; To be titled, Jonathan Viner Gallery, London (2010); Halbjahresgaben, Tanzschule-Projects, Munich; Collaboration (with Hanako Geierhos), Autocenter, Berlin; About Premises and Promises (cur.), Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2009); Paper, Scissors, Stone (cur. Gyonata Bonvicini), Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm; La Petite Histoire, Kunstraum NOE, Vienna. (2008).
Volker Eichelmann was born in Hamburg, Germany and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He completed a BA in Critical Fine Art Practice at Central St Martins in 1998 followed by an MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London University. Eichelmann showed recently with Manuela Leinhoss at Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2008), and in group shows including ‘Tier- Perspektiven’, Souterain , Berlin; Fiktion. Narration. Struktur, artnews projects, Berlin; Hello Darkness, K21 Videoraum, Düsseldorf (2008); Constructions of Nature, Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden; and Exportation, T293, Naples. Volker Eichelmann’s film Follies & Grottoes will be shown at Barbican Art Gallery, 19 August (7-10pm) as part of an evening looking at the theme of Convulsive Architecture in connection to the Barbican’s exhibition ‘The Surreal House’ which runs 10 June – 12 September. www.barbican.org.uk/101
“Proposals”
1 - 31 July 2010
ANCIENT & MODERN presents a two-person show of collages by Volker Eichelmann alongside a series of new paintings and construction by Florian Schmidt.
The 18th and early 19th-centuries saw classical country house architecture augmented by the fanciful inclusion of ‘follies and grottoes’ incorporated into the surrounding landscape. Taking their cue from Italianate and French landscape architecture, these structures often featured faux Roman or Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys and medieval castles, the result of wilful and romantic endeavour, made famous in London by Alexander Pope at Twickenham: “...When you shut the Doors of this Grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous Room, a Camera Obscura, on the walls of which all the objects of the River, Hills, Woods, and Boats, are forming a moving Picture...”.
The most visionary architecture seems destined to remain on the page however as, simultaneously, the ingenious German artist and sometime architect Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) created an imagined expressionist architecture in sketches; while the ‘Alpine Architecture’ (1919) of Bruno Taut (1880-1938) proposed wholly utopian visions whose graphic qualities evoke a mysticism that would be made moribund by bricks and mortar.
Volker Eichelmann’s ‘Proposals for Sculptures and Buildings’, numbering over six hundred in all, contain the vision rather than the pragmatics required for the realisation of a sculpture, building or structure. Assembled from magazine cut-outs, the thirty presented here eschew production for the proposal, in turn interrogating, cajoling, questioning and celebrating past imaginings of the future; the project instituting itself as a veritable archive of paper architecture.
Florian Schmidt’s painted and often torn surfaces expose their own underlying architecture, as if in the process of being dismantled and reassembled. In an attempt to establish a language of their own, they acknowledge their formal mid-20th-century art historical precedents while celebrating the simple and essential acts of making, Here, Florian’s series of seven new paintings are shown within his own architectural intervention that subdivides the gallery space into itself.
For more information & images please contact mail@ancientandmodern.org
Exhibition Preview: Wednesday 30 June, 6-8pm
Exhibition open Wednesdays - Saturdays, 12-6pm and by appointment
Notes on the artists:
Florian Schmidt (b.1980, Raabs/Thaya, Austria) lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. He studied at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (1999-2006) and Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Hamburg (2002-3) and has exhibited recently at Ben Kaufmann, Berlin and Independent, New York (2010), Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan (2009), New Galerie de France, Paris and Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2008). Group shows include Die dritte Dimension, New Galerie, Paris; To be titled, Jonathan Viner Gallery, London (2010); Halbjahresgaben, Tanzschule-Projects, Munich; Collaboration (with Hanako Geierhos), Autocenter, Berlin; About Premises and Promises (cur.), Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2009); Paper, Scissors, Stone (cur. Gyonata Bonvicini), Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm; La Petite Histoire, Kunstraum NOE, Vienna. (2008).
Volker Eichelmann was born in Hamburg, Germany and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He completed a BA in Critical Fine Art Practice at Central St Martins in 1998 followed by an MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London University. Eichelmann showed recently with Manuela Leinhoss at Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2008), and in group shows including ‘Tier- Perspektiven’, Souterain , Berlin; Fiktion. Narration. Struktur, artnews projects, Berlin; Hello Darkness, K21 Videoraum, Düsseldorf (2008); Constructions of Nature, Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden; and Exportation, T293, Naples. Volker Eichelmann’s film Follies & Grottoes will be shown at Barbican Art Gallery, 19 August (7-10pm) as part of an evening looking at the theme of Convulsive Architecture in connection to the Barbican’s exhibition ‘The Surreal House’ which runs 10 June – 12 September. www.barbican.org.uk/101