Harris Lieberman

Thomas Zipp

23 Feb - 30 Mar 2013

© Thomas Zipp
A.B.: DRENCH, 2013
THOMAS ZIPP
The Chips Are Down
23 February – 30 March 2013

Harris Lieberman is delighted to present The Chips Are Down, Thomas Zipp’s third exhibition at the gallery. Thomas Zipp is known for his transformative, all encompassing installations which utilize painting, sculpture, film and drawing. He integrates all of these different elements with the architecture of the exhibition venue to create an altered universe with suspended reality. His work is further defined by an engagement with history, philosophy, science, and art history.

The exhibition’s title is borrowed from the Jean-Paul Sartre play that explores reality and irreality through its character’s existence in life and death. This idea of duality is a hallmark of Zipp’s work and is central to his new exhibition at Harris Lieberman. Conceived as a performance in three parts, the installation incorporates performance, sound and video with a series of works on canvas and on paper. The abstract paintings incorporate language from medical textbooks on narcoanalysis, the use of “truth serums” to explore the subconscious. Psychotropic drugs and the alternate reality they induce is a common theme in Zipp’s work. It is representative of a larger interest in the exploration of the self but also the role of oneself in society with its basic tenants such as good and evil, truth and deception, normal and abnormal.

As part of the exhibition, a performance will take place during the opening on Saturday, February 23 from 5 to 8 pm. The performance will be repeated on Saturdays, March 9 and March 30, from 2 to 6 pm.

Thomas Zipp (Born in Heppenheim, 1966) lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions include The World ́s most complete Congress of Ritatin Treatments, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck 2011; White Reformation Co-op Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2010; Mens Agitat Molem (Luther & The Family of Pills), Sammlung Goetz, Munich, 2009; Planet Caravan: Is There Life After Death? A Futuristic World Fair, Museum Dhondt - Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium, 2008 and South London Gallery, London 2007; and Kunsthalle Mannheim, Museum in der Alten Post, Muehlheim, 2007. Group exhibitions include: Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art from Germany, Saatchi Gallery, London 2011; If Not In This Period Of Time: Contemporary German Painting 1989-2010, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo 2010; Defamation of Character, PS1, New York 2006; Rings of Saturn, Tate Modern, London 2006 and Of Mice and Men, 4th Berlin Biennale 2006.
 

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