Max Wigram

With and Without Painting

18 Jul - 12 Aug 2011

Exhibition view
WITH AND WITHOUT PAINTING
Summer show at Max Wigram Gallery
18 July - 12 August, 2011

Athanasios Argianas, Dafni Barbageorgopoulou, Pavel Büchler, Lucio Fontana, FOS, Marine Hugonnier, Barnaby Hosking, Ben Mayman, Jack Newling

This exhibition of work by nine artists is as much about the relationship between individual pieces than any overarching principle. Starting, however, with the basis of painting made without the use of the hand, the work by nine artists in all, touches on design, print, abstraction and reproduction.
Both Marine Hugonnier and Pavel Büchler work by altering or reconfiguring existing paintings, reclaiming work made by other artists. Two reports accompany each ‘restoration painting’ by Hugonnier. One - Disguised as a tear – is an elaborate late 18th century landscape painting - that has beside it the description and record of the work before and after restoration. Pavel Büchler’s series of Modern Paintings are made up from discarded paintings left by other artists.
Three tall freestanding concrete sculptures by Ben Mayman play unashamedly with the expressive potential in African and Eastern sculpture found by Modernist artists during the middle of the 20th century.
Dafni Barbageorgopoulou’s huge tapestry, Bright Pointed Arch, flows down from the ceiling to reveal an expanding abstract motif which combines the folkloric with the fashionable.
The projection, by Barnaby Hosking, onto a ground or screen of black velvet reveals a reverberating tetrahedron that floats in and out of focus.
Jack Newling’s light touch with prints on cardboard are both a reinvestment and representation of the flat surface, while Images of No Gravity 4,5 and 6 by Athanasios Argianas, look at the mechanical process of recording and re-transmitting information.
FOS painting reinvests a literal use of material, where the origin of colour, in this case stain from fruits, is imbedded for real, without illusion, on a salt surface.
Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, made in 1961, plays a conceptual and pivotal role in the exhibition with the tension of the actual surface typically released, punctured by the artist.
 

Tags: Athanasios Argianas, Pavel Büchler, Lucio Fontana, FOS, Barnaby Hosking, Marine Hugonnier