Benjamin Butler / Sharon Ya'ari
09 Sep - 17 Oct 2009
BENJAMIN BUTLER: “These Trees”
SHARON YA'ARI
Opening: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 7 p.m.
Exhibition runs: 09.09. to 17.10.2009
Galerie Martin Janda
A-1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tue-Fri 1-6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
From September 9 to October 17, 2009, Galerie Martin Janda will be showing new works by Benjamin Butler and Sharon Ya’ari. The link between these two artistic positions is the depiction of landscapes; however, here the landscape acts as a medium for something that lies behind or in between.
“Let’s paint another tree.“ Benjamin Butler, born in Wamego, Kansas in 1975, developed a painterly interest in the artistic motive of the forest and the tree several years ago. Butler’s approach appears playful, the same being true for his use of different styles and formal conventions of modern painting. During a process of abstraction, the motive of the tree or the landscape is dissolved into shapes, lines and color fields, with Butler applying the whole range between masterly perfection and amateurish action. Although focussing on just one motive constitutes a limitation of his formal possibilities, the variation of the same theme leads to the disintegration of the narrative element and, thus, to a certain liberation, lending radicalness to his position.
“It has been written that my paintings are about the decline of modernism, and the kitsch, which is a nice way to put it, but to me it feels more like I’m reconciling or synthesizing the differences between high and low art, or fine art and kitsch. And this kind of parallels my own identity, because to me it feels like I’m of two minds: what I usually call my Kansas mind – formed by growing up in a place where culture consists mainly of regional landscape painting and decorative arts, and crafts, and everything after Kansas – Grad School in Chicago, and living in New York. So I have two separate cultural histories that I can comfortably flip back and forth between.” (Butler)
Picnic tables, bus stops, camels on a desert mountain range. Sharon Ya'ari’s latest photographic works depict scenes of an in-between. “It’s about holding time, waiting time, gazing time. The images present a paused, frozen, almost fossilized situation.“ (Ya'ari). One of the larger pieces shows two men on horseback in a classically composed landscape, evoking associations with historic images of knights pausing in battle. Only at second glance, the viewer becomes aware of the watch tower in the center, which is part of a prison. „Living in Israel, a country with a painfully acute sense of the mutual dependency of geography and national identity, Sharon Ya'ari is particularly aware of the socially constructed character of the landscape. (...) By playing with the dictates of the Arcadian tradition, Ya'ari's images tread a fine line between reality and escape, offering up a kind of damaged utopia.” (Gregory Williams, Artforum) Sharon Ya’ari, born in 1966, lives and works in Tel Aviv.
SHARON YA'ARI
Opening: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 7 p.m.
Exhibition runs: 09.09. to 17.10.2009
Galerie Martin Janda
A-1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tue-Fri 1-6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
From September 9 to October 17, 2009, Galerie Martin Janda will be showing new works by Benjamin Butler and Sharon Ya’ari. The link between these two artistic positions is the depiction of landscapes; however, here the landscape acts as a medium for something that lies behind or in between.
“Let’s paint another tree.“ Benjamin Butler, born in Wamego, Kansas in 1975, developed a painterly interest in the artistic motive of the forest and the tree several years ago. Butler’s approach appears playful, the same being true for his use of different styles and formal conventions of modern painting. During a process of abstraction, the motive of the tree or the landscape is dissolved into shapes, lines and color fields, with Butler applying the whole range between masterly perfection and amateurish action. Although focussing on just one motive constitutes a limitation of his formal possibilities, the variation of the same theme leads to the disintegration of the narrative element and, thus, to a certain liberation, lending radicalness to his position.
“It has been written that my paintings are about the decline of modernism, and the kitsch, which is a nice way to put it, but to me it feels more like I’m reconciling or synthesizing the differences between high and low art, or fine art and kitsch. And this kind of parallels my own identity, because to me it feels like I’m of two minds: what I usually call my Kansas mind – formed by growing up in a place where culture consists mainly of regional landscape painting and decorative arts, and crafts, and everything after Kansas – Grad School in Chicago, and living in New York. So I have two separate cultural histories that I can comfortably flip back and forth between.” (Butler)
Picnic tables, bus stops, camels on a desert mountain range. Sharon Ya'ari’s latest photographic works depict scenes of an in-between. “It’s about holding time, waiting time, gazing time. The images present a paused, frozen, almost fossilized situation.“ (Ya'ari). One of the larger pieces shows two men on horseback in a classically composed landscape, evoking associations with historic images of knights pausing in battle. Only at second glance, the viewer becomes aware of the watch tower in the center, which is part of a prison. „Living in Israel, a country with a painfully acute sense of the mutual dependency of geography and national identity, Sharon Ya'ari is particularly aware of the socially constructed character of the landscape. (...) By playing with the dictates of the Arcadian tradition, Ya'ari's images tread a fine line between reality and escape, offering up a kind of damaged utopia.” (Gregory Williams, Artforum) Sharon Ya’ari, born in 1966, lives and works in Tel Aviv.