Amie Dicke
20 Sep - 25 Oct 2008
Amie DICKE: Passive Drifter
September 20 – October 25, 2008
Opening: Saturday, September 20, 7 – 9 pm
"The harmony of soul and body – how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void."
-spoken by Basil Hallward, Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Javier Peres is pleased to present "Passive Drifter," a solo exhibition by Amie Dicke at Peres Projects, Berlin.
In 1891, the fictional Basil Hallward, the artist in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray proclaims the epigram above – a comment on what is at stake in art, and a perhaps vain search for deeper meaning in aesthetic pursuits. No stranger to this search, Amie Dicke investigates what it means to be trapped in surface – like models on fashion magazine covers, like ready-made objects turned art, or like Dorian Gray's fate trapped in the surface of a painting.
Dicke's fourth solo exhibition with Peres Projects consists of a new body of sculptural works and works on paper. Revealing her signature concern with the classical imagery and contemporary beauty ideals we are heir to, Dicke teases out many of the ambiguities and contradictions in these aesthetic clichés. The title, "Passive Drifter," examines the process of making art, being a parasite or free-loader on a shared visual history, and in equally damning fashion, viewing art. The result is a complex aesthetic game that turns familiar images on their head, leaving the artist with a rich visual vocabulary all her own.
Stockings stretched, pinned and framed in the shape of a cross invoke both a sleekly rendered Golgotha and splayed legs presenting a non-existent crotch; Amie Dicke's signature cut-outs – themselves violent deconstructions of female beauty and fashion – find their own expression in her cutout of a German map of colonial holdings from 1914, where the continents as we know them have been cut away to reveal sinewy strips of liquid-looking de-territorialized land. At once biomorphic and abstract, Amie Dicke's works profit from the temporality and fragility of chance occurrence, passive drifting and non-form, while simultaneously embracing inspired corporeality.
Amie Dicke (b. 1978 Rotterdam, the Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam and will be present for the opening.
"Passive Drifter" will be on view at Peres Projects (Schlesische Str. 26, 10997 Berlin) through October 25, 2008. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment. For further information or reproductions please contact Margherita Belaief at +49 30 6162 6962, or margherita@peresprojects.com. Passive Drifter has been made possible by the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation and the Royal Netherlands Embassy.
September 20 – October 25, 2008
Opening: Saturday, September 20, 7 – 9 pm
"The harmony of soul and body – how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void."
-spoken by Basil Hallward, Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Javier Peres is pleased to present "Passive Drifter," a solo exhibition by Amie Dicke at Peres Projects, Berlin.
In 1891, the fictional Basil Hallward, the artist in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray proclaims the epigram above – a comment on what is at stake in art, and a perhaps vain search for deeper meaning in aesthetic pursuits. No stranger to this search, Amie Dicke investigates what it means to be trapped in surface – like models on fashion magazine covers, like ready-made objects turned art, or like Dorian Gray's fate trapped in the surface of a painting.
Dicke's fourth solo exhibition with Peres Projects consists of a new body of sculptural works and works on paper. Revealing her signature concern with the classical imagery and contemporary beauty ideals we are heir to, Dicke teases out many of the ambiguities and contradictions in these aesthetic clichés. The title, "Passive Drifter," examines the process of making art, being a parasite or free-loader on a shared visual history, and in equally damning fashion, viewing art. The result is a complex aesthetic game that turns familiar images on their head, leaving the artist with a rich visual vocabulary all her own.
Stockings stretched, pinned and framed in the shape of a cross invoke both a sleekly rendered Golgotha and splayed legs presenting a non-existent crotch; Amie Dicke's signature cut-outs – themselves violent deconstructions of female beauty and fashion – find their own expression in her cutout of a German map of colonial holdings from 1914, where the continents as we know them have been cut away to reveal sinewy strips of liquid-looking de-territorialized land. At once biomorphic and abstract, Amie Dicke's works profit from the temporality and fragility of chance occurrence, passive drifting and non-form, while simultaneously embracing inspired corporeality.
Amie Dicke (b. 1978 Rotterdam, the Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam and will be present for the opening.
"Passive Drifter" will be on view at Peres Projects (Schlesische Str. 26, 10997 Berlin) through October 25, 2008. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment. For further information or reproductions please contact Margherita Belaief at +49 30 6162 6962, or margherita@peresprojects.com. Passive Drifter has been made possible by the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation and the Royal Netherlands Embassy.