Liz Deschenes / Charlotte Posenenske
29 Sep - 12 Dec 2012
© Charlotte Posenenske
Series B Reliefs, 1967-2008
Aluminium, convexly folded, sprayed, standard RAL matt yellow
each 100 x 50 x 15 cm / 39.37 x 19.68 x 5.90 inches
Series B Reliefs, 1967-2008
Aluminium, convexly folded, sprayed, standard RAL matt yellow
each 100 x 50 x 15 cm / 39.37 x 19.68 x 5.90 inches
LIZ DESCHENES / CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE
29 September - 12 December 2012
We are particularly pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Liz Deschenes (*1966) and Charlotte Posenenske (1930-1985). This is the first time their work is shown together.
Deschenes and Posenenske, separated by time and geography, recast questions of form, production, distribution, ontology, consumption, seeing and displaying. In this constellation, reversals are operating as points of intersection: uniqueness vs unlimited reproduction, materiality vs technologically produced objects referencing consumer goods, fragility vs sturdiness. The conversation hits moments of smooth union in the exploration of the possibilities of abstraction, the creation of space both inside and outside the work, the continuous engagement with the specific medium (photography and sculpture respectively), while ever expanding beyond them.
Charlotte Posenenske, one of the few artists in Germany to work within Minimalism in the 1960s, produced sculptural pictures, mostly monochrome surfaces made of steel and aluminum, sprayed with weatherproof RAL standard colours. Her critique of commercialism and her re-interpretation of the role of the artist still resonate as radical. The industrially produced Reliefs are conceived as multi-panel arrangements that can be re-configured in endless combinations and positions: on the floor, on walls, high, low, indoors, preferably outdoors, in non-art contexts. Posenenske restricts the display of the parts only slightly by stipulating 3 conditions, adding effervescence to their playful modularity.
Liz Deschenes’ self-referential pictures are systematic and poetic explorations of the language and mechanics of photography. Instead of locking time in permanent forms, her camera-less images take this medium’s principal connection to the real, to its elemental components. Exposing black and white photo sensitive paper to the night sky, or color paper to intense daylight she produces semi-reflective fields, often with mirror-like properties. Liz Deschenes responds to Posenenske’s yellow, red and blue, convexely folded, concavely canted Reliefs with a series of silver corner pieces and grey graphite rectangular corners suspended from the gallery walls. The photograms bracket the works around them, mirroring them via Deschenes’ decision to reference the standardized dimensions of Posenenske’s aluminum works. The new matte photograms, produced for this exhibition at H 100 cm and W 50 cm correspond directly to the Reliefs- a double-take, not quite a mirror image, but close, another fold in her reflection on the art object becoming the actual embodiment of its “subject-matter”.
“But the loveliness of her artworks belies the astringency this description suggests”. (phrase from Brian Sholis introduction to an interview with Liz Deschenes, Art in America, March 2012)
Liz Deschenes lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Parcours at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012) that she co-designed and co-curated with Florian Pumhösl. She has had solo exhibitions at Miguel Abreu Gallery, NY and Sutton Lane, Brussels, London, Paris while a one person show at the Secession in Vienna is forthcoming (December 2012).
Her work is in many public collections including MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Art Institute of Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annondale-onHudson, NY. She teaches at Bennington College, Bennigton, Vermont and is a Visiting Artist at Columbia University, New York.
Charlotte Posenenske’s disillusionment with the art world prompted her decision to stop making art in 1969 and devote herself to the study of sociology. As she wrote in her manifesto, published in Art International in 1968: ”It is difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that art can contribute nothing to solving urgent social problems”. Her work was rediscovered in the 00’s with a solo exhibition at the Galerie im Taxispalais Innsbruck (2005) curated by Astrid Wege, a presentation at Between Bridges, an exhibition space ran by Wolfgang Tillmans in London (2007) and the Mehdi Chouakri Gallery, Berlin (2007). Posenenske’s work was included in Documenta 12, Kassel (2005) and in the 30th Sao Paulo Biennial (2012). Her work is part of important collections, amongst others, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
29 September - 12 December 2012
We are particularly pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Liz Deschenes (*1966) and Charlotte Posenenske (1930-1985). This is the first time their work is shown together.
Deschenes and Posenenske, separated by time and geography, recast questions of form, production, distribution, ontology, consumption, seeing and displaying. In this constellation, reversals are operating as points of intersection: uniqueness vs unlimited reproduction, materiality vs technologically produced objects referencing consumer goods, fragility vs sturdiness. The conversation hits moments of smooth union in the exploration of the possibilities of abstraction, the creation of space both inside and outside the work, the continuous engagement with the specific medium (photography and sculpture respectively), while ever expanding beyond them.
Charlotte Posenenske, one of the few artists in Germany to work within Minimalism in the 1960s, produced sculptural pictures, mostly monochrome surfaces made of steel and aluminum, sprayed with weatherproof RAL standard colours. Her critique of commercialism and her re-interpretation of the role of the artist still resonate as radical. The industrially produced Reliefs are conceived as multi-panel arrangements that can be re-configured in endless combinations and positions: on the floor, on walls, high, low, indoors, preferably outdoors, in non-art contexts. Posenenske restricts the display of the parts only slightly by stipulating 3 conditions, adding effervescence to their playful modularity.
Liz Deschenes’ self-referential pictures are systematic and poetic explorations of the language and mechanics of photography. Instead of locking time in permanent forms, her camera-less images take this medium’s principal connection to the real, to its elemental components. Exposing black and white photo sensitive paper to the night sky, or color paper to intense daylight she produces semi-reflective fields, often with mirror-like properties. Liz Deschenes responds to Posenenske’s yellow, red and blue, convexely folded, concavely canted Reliefs with a series of silver corner pieces and grey graphite rectangular corners suspended from the gallery walls. The photograms bracket the works around them, mirroring them via Deschenes’ decision to reference the standardized dimensions of Posenenske’s aluminum works. The new matte photograms, produced for this exhibition at H 100 cm and W 50 cm correspond directly to the Reliefs- a double-take, not quite a mirror image, but close, another fold in her reflection on the art object becoming the actual embodiment of its “subject-matter”.
“But the loveliness of her artworks belies the astringency this description suggests”. (phrase from Brian Sholis introduction to an interview with Liz Deschenes, Art in America, March 2012)
Liz Deschenes lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Parcours at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012) that she co-designed and co-curated with Florian Pumhösl. She has had solo exhibitions at Miguel Abreu Gallery, NY and Sutton Lane, Brussels, London, Paris while a one person show at the Secession in Vienna is forthcoming (December 2012).
Her work is in many public collections including MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Art Institute of Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annondale-onHudson, NY. She teaches at Bennington College, Bennigton, Vermont and is a Visiting Artist at Columbia University, New York.
Charlotte Posenenske’s disillusionment with the art world prompted her decision to stop making art in 1969 and devote herself to the study of sociology. As she wrote in her manifesto, published in Art International in 1968: ”It is difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that art can contribute nothing to solving urgent social problems”. Her work was rediscovered in the 00’s with a solo exhibition at the Galerie im Taxispalais Innsbruck (2005) curated by Astrid Wege, a presentation at Between Bridges, an exhibition space ran by Wolfgang Tillmans in London (2007) and the Mehdi Chouakri Gallery, Berlin (2007). Posenenske’s work was included in Documenta 12, Kassel (2005) and in the 30th Sao Paulo Biennial (2012). Her work is part of important collections, amongst others, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.