Eric Legris
12 Mar - 01 May 2011
ERIC LEGRIS
Jellyfish
12 March – 1 May, 2011
Kavi Gupta Gallery is proud to present Jellyfish, a new exhibition of paintings and collage by Eric Legris.
While jellyfish are visually absent from the exhibition, the titular organism stands as an entity whose body and environment give form to each other. In part influenced by Marcel Broodthaers, Legris' Jellyfish is a wink to the renowned Belgian artist's beloved subject, the mussel. In Broodthaers' poem, la moule (1963), he lyrically epitomizes this biological phenomenon:
This clever thing has avoided society's mold.
She's cast herself in her very own.
Other look-alikes share with her the anti-sea.
She's perfect.
Legris' interest in boundaries and mimicry are apparent in light of his recent work, oil paintings on large sheets of zinc and unstretched linen and a number of smaller bricolage-styled collages. The same structured pattern, derived from the branches between two trees, is repainted in each work, with successive generations sometimes only marginally resembling the previous set. Like the jellyfish's bell, these non-orientable surfaces create a curious genealogy of expression that provokes one to join the game of relating all the strewn material, of seeing all the connections in play, only then to show a system of fickle distinction and betweeness.
Eric Legris (b. 1981 in Lubec, Maine) lives and works in Berlin. Legris attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine from 1999 until 2003 and will receive his Master's Of Fine Arts from Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School Of The Arts in 2011. Recent group exhibitions of Legris' work include New American Values (2010) at Atelierhof Kreuzberg in Berlin, Ich Habe Stimmen Gehört (2009) at Galerie Im Regierungsviertel in Berlin, and It's not the sandwich we enjoy, it's the pickle (2009)(with Nathan Baker) at Objectiv Gallery in Prague. Jellyfish marks Legris' solo debut exhibition in Berlin.
Jellyfish
12 March – 1 May, 2011
Kavi Gupta Gallery is proud to present Jellyfish, a new exhibition of paintings and collage by Eric Legris.
While jellyfish are visually absent from the exhibition, the titular organism stands as an entity whose body and environment give form to each other. In part influenced by Marcel Broodthaers, Legris' Jellyfish is a wink to the renowned Belgian artist's beloved subject, the mussel. In Broodthaers' poem, la moule (1963), he lyrically epitomizes this biological phenomenon:
This clever thing has avoided society's mold.
She's cast herself in her very own.
Other look-alikes share with her the anti-sea.
She's perfect.
Legris' interest in boundaries and mimicry are apparent in light of his recent work, oil paintings on large sheets of zinc and unstretched linen and a number of smaller bricolage-styled collages. The same structured pattern, derived from the branches between two trees, is repainted in each work, with successive generations sometimes only marginally resembling the previous set. Like the jellyfish's bell, these non-orientable surfaces create a curious genealogy of expression that provokes one to join the game of relating all the strewn material, of seeing all the connections in play, only then to show a system of fickle distinction and betweeness.
Eric Legris (b. 1981 in Lubec, Maine) lives and works in Berlin. Legris attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine from 1999 until 2003 and will receive his Master's Of Fine Arts from Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School Of The Arts in 2011. Recent group exhibitions of Legris' work include New American Values (2010) at Atelierhof Kreuzberg in Berlin, Ich Habe Stimmen Gehört (2009) at Galerie Im Regierungsviertel in Berlin, and It's not the sandwich we enjoy, it's the pickle (2009)(with Nathan Baker) at Objectiv Gallery in Prague. Jellyfish marks Legris' solo debut exhibition in Berlin.