Carlier | Gebauer

Charlotte Moth

19 Feb - 12 Mar 2011

© Charlotte Moth
Displacements, Installation view, carlier | gebauer, 2011
CHARLOTTE MOTH
Displacements
19 February - 12 March, 2011

We are pleased to announce Charlotte Moth‘s solo exhibition at carlier | gebauer. The British artist (born 1978), who lives and works in Paris, has studied at the Slade School of Art, University College London, and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Her changing experiences at different places and her close examination of space and architecture are crucial aspects of her work. Recently she has exhibited at Gasworks, London (2011), the Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg (2010), Schaufenster project space at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen at Dusseldorf (2009), Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam (2008), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2008), JET Space in Berlin (2007) as well as at Project Art Centre in Dublin (2007). For the exhibition at carlier | gebauer she has produced a new site-specific installation.

In her photographic series and slide installations Charlotte Moth looks at the phenomenology of architectural spaces. The interior and exterior views of these spaces seem both familiar as well as out-of-time. Mainly they appear as transitory spaces. Her images are far more than documentary shots: they create memories of spaces through photographic impressions that pick up on elements such as contrasts and outlines, geometry, light, rhythm, silence and movement. Furthermore, in her site specific installations Charlotte Moth creates what she calls a “sculptural dialogue“ between the work and the gallery space. The artist was influenced by Gaston Bachelards writing “Poetics of Space“ in which the philosopher highlights the inventive power of images. The partially movable structures of Moth‘s installations, wooden constructions and light installations emphasise this characteristic and question the institutional space.

The slide installations Event made to be photographed (2010), Untitled (2010) (which shows a progressive build up of coloured paper in a space, and could be compared to a colour test kit), Untitled (figtree) (2008) and Betonsalon evening (2008) present images that range from abstract situations to everyday scenes. These works echo in various ways images taken by Moth that are part of a larger photographic collection called the 'Travelogue' begun in 1999. This body of images concentrates on the phenomenological interpretation of architectural spaces. Historical categories and references of architecture are part of this collection; nevertheless, she is more interested in an organic process of thinking, that corresponds with the relation between image and experience. The specific place of the “settings“ remain undetermined. The more these images appear displaced in relation to a specific time frame, the more attention is drawn to the function of the image itself as a documentary medium or potential narration. In Event made to be photographed the artist superimposes two slides, that blend softly into one another. In most of her works the conditions of presentation are reflected, residues of previous lives manifest, lingering in clues, that may be in the title or other works that sit alongside it.

For the exhibition at carlier | gebauer 2011 Charlotte Moth has created a large site specific installation, consisting of a curtain that dissects the main gallery space. This curtain is double-sided; blue and shiny violet. Entering the gallery space the violet coloured fabric becomes visible at first; as soon as the visitor crosses through the threshold of this curtain, the blue side of the curtain comes to sight, but also its relationship to the architecture of the gallery itself. The curtain does not function as an isolated element, but rather interacts with the other works placed within the space. The first curtain installation was realised in 2009 in an exhibition at Dusseldorf. The title of the work quotes the Italian Arte Povera artist Alighiero e Boetti: Behind every surface there is a mystery: a hand that might emerge, an image that might be kindled, or a structure that might reveal its image.

Together with Suspended lighting structure, version 2 416 x 517 cm (2011) ) in the main gallery space, the curtain transforms the exhibition space into an ambiguous stage setting: a wooden construction with three theatre spotlights hangs from the ceiling and immerses the space into different colours. The curtain and the light installation create an imaginary space, that visitors can enter and fill with their own associations and spatial experiences. Whereas the curtain represents the contradictory moments of showing and hiding, the light installation modulates between visibility and invisibility through working with the immaterial and ambient lighting conditions of the exhibition space.
 

Tags: Alighiero Boetti, Charlotte Moth