Kirsten Pieroth
23 Mar - 02 Jun 2013
KIRSTEN PIEROTH
Menu
23 March - 2 June 2013
The Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft is delighted to announce the forthcoming solo show by Kirsten Pieroth (b. 1970 in Offenbach am Main, lives in Berlin).
Entitled Menu, Kirsten Pieroth brings together a group of new works for this exhibition that derive from a critical questioning of modern consumer culture. As in earlier works – looking at the inventor Thomas A. Edison and the pioneer of wireless communication, Guglielmo Marconi, for example – Pieroth focuses in her current series on the achievements of modernity.
In Pastoral Symphony (2013), the artist has put together a collection of pages containing advertisements from different, chiefly American magazines. Presented on corrugated cardboard, the arrangements follow a chronological history, which encompasses the first launch and subsequent distribution of various products over the last 100 years.
Pieroth’s interest doesn’t lie here in a historicising selection of promotional ads, but rather in a collage-like imaging of modern life, in which visual and semantic similarities between the ads arise. Pieroth destabilises the promises of the capitalist system of production by her juxtaposition and selection of ads – for example, when a credit card is being promoted with the gesture of folded hands, a wallet unfolds winglike just in front of the viewer, or the silhouette of a inflated airbag formally resembles the shape of the earth. The artist draws up a biography of industrial society, which, in its conception of progress, is driven by the desire for acceleration and constant growth.
In the sculpture Untitled (Frozen) (2013), the artist refers to a commercial product, which ranks as one of the most revolutionary inventions of the twentieth century: frozen food. Flash-frozen foods were introduced into the U.S. market for the first time in 1930. Pieroth’s papier-mâché object plays with the nature of the organic material, which is pressed into a rectangular shape. The cube of spinach duly suggests those industrial norms, which promise a more effective and productive daily life. In a further work Untitled (Caramel) (2013), Pieroth has cast American dollar banknotes in caramel bars as an ironic act of added value. Sugar as a preservative and source of energy can be interpreted here as a metaphor for the reward system of a society in which labour and purchasing power are mutually dependent.
In her collages and objects, Pieroth focuses likewise on consumer behaviour in addition to the advertising mechanisms of the consumer industry. In a similar way to the French historian and sociologist Michel de Certeau’s description in his book L'Invention du Quotidien (1980), she points out in her work that different tactics of appropriation, improvisation and further utilisation of products are constantly at the disposal of the consumer in everyday life. He is thus not merely a passive consumer, but simultaneously an active producer, who can undermine and alter existing cultural rules by means of the individual use of products.Kirsten Pieroth (b. 1970, Offenbach a. Main, Germany) lives in Berlin. In the last few years she presented her works in international solo exhibitions as for example at Office Baroque, Antwerp and at Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (both 2012); at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA (2010); at Silberkuppe, Berlin (2009); at CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, USA (2008); at the Secession in Vienna (2005); at Cubitt in London (together with Henrik Olesen, 2005) as well as at Portikus, Frankfurt a. M. (2003). Besides she was represented in group exhibitions as in The Imminence of Poetics, 30th São Paulo Biennial (2012); in Power to the People, ACCA Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2011); in Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); in Von realer Gegenwart: Marcel Broodthaers heute, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2010); in Under One Umbrella, Kunsthalle Bergen, Norway (2010), as well as in Little Theatre of Gestures at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel and at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (both 2009).
Concurrently with the solo exhibition by Kirsten Pieroth the Kunstverein Nürnber is presenting a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Tamara Henderson.
Menu
23 March - 2 June 2013
The Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft is delighted to announce the forthcoming solo show by Kirsten Pieroth (b. 1970 in Offenbach am Main, lives in Berlin).
Entitled Menu, Kirsten Pieroth brings together a group of new works for this exhibition that derive from a critical questioning of modern consumer culture. As in earlier works – looking at the inventor Thomas A. Edison and the pioneer of wireless communication, Guglielmo Marconi, for example – Pieroth focuses in her current series on the achievements of modernity.
In Pastoral Symphony (2013), the artist has put together a collection of pages containing advertisements from different, chiefly American magazines. Presented on corrugated cardboard, the arrangements follow a chronological history, which encompasses the first launch and subsequent distribution of various products over the last 100 years.
Pieroth’s interest doesn’t lie here in a historicising selection of promotional ads, but rather in a collage-like imaging of modern life, in which visual and semantic similarities between the ads arise. Pieroth destabilises the promises of the capitalist system of production by her juxtaposition and selection of ads – for example, when a credit card is being promoted with the gesture of folded hands, a wallet unfolds winglike just in front of the viewer, or the silhouette of a inflated airbag formally resembles the shape of the earth. The artist draws up a biography of industrial society, which, in its conception of progress, is driven by the desire for acceleration and constant growth.
In the sculpture Untitled (Frozen) (2013), the artist refers to a commercial product, which ranks as one of the most revolutionary inventions of the twentieth century: frozen food. Flash-frozen foods were introduced into the U.S. market for the first time in 1930. Pieroth’s papier-mâché object plays with the nature of the organic material, which is pressed into a rectangular shape. The cube of spinach duly suggests those industrial norms, which promise a more effective and productive daily life. In a further work Untitled (Caramel) (2013), Pieroth has cast American dollar banknotes in caramel bars as an ironic act of added value. Sugar as a preservative and source of energy can be interpreted here as a metaphor for the reward system of a society in which labour and purchasing power are mutually dependent.
In her collages and objects, Pieroth focuses likewise on consumer behaviour in addition to the advertising mechanisms of the consumer industry. In a similar way to the French historian and sociologist Michel de Certeau’s description in his book L'Invention du Quotidien (1980), she points out in her work that different tactics of appropriation, improvisation and further utilisation of products are constantly at the disposal of the consumer in everyday life. He is thus not merely a passive consumer, but simultaneously an active producer, who can undermine and alter existing cultural rules by means of the individual use of products.Kirsten Pieroth (b. 1970, Offenbach a. Main, Germany) lives in Berlin. In the last few years she presented her works in international solo exhibitions as for example at Office Baroque, Antwerp and at Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (both 2012); at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, USA (2010); at Silberkuppe, Berlin (2009); at CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, USA (2008); at the Secession in Vienna (2005); at Cubitt in London (together with Henrik Olesen, 2005) as well as at Portikus, Frankfurt a. M. (2003). Besides she was represented in group exhibitions as in The Imminence of Poetics, 30th São Paulo Biennial (2012); in Power to the People, ACCA Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2011); in Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); in Von realer Gegenwart: Marcel Broodthaers heute, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2010); in Under One Umbrella, Kunsthalle Bergen, Norway (2010), as well as in Little Theatre of Gestures at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel and at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (both 2009).
Concurrently with the solo exhibition by Kirsten Pieroth the Kunstverein Nürnber is presenting a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Tamara Henderson.