Andro Wekua
29 Aug - 17 Oct 2009
ANDRO WEKUA
August 29 - October 17, 2009
Opening: Friday, August 28, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased to announce Andro Wekua's fourth solo exhibition in the gallery. With his current exhibition 28. August, Andro Wekua invites visitors to immerse themselves in a scenography in which new sculptures, paintings, collages, photographs and serigraphs feature equally. Although all the different elements have a strong relationship to each other, each work remains independent.
In the exhibition the visitors’ attention is directed towards a sculpture in the form of a table. A game takes place which the observer is already acquainted with from Andro Wekua's collages, but on neither a canvas nor a piece of paper, but on an aluminium object. The table surface has been turned into a colourful, marble-effect wax-colour cast. Two female hands, gripping two calves with dancing feet, are placed on top of it. Are the legs being prevented from running away? Are they being held like the legs of a doll or puppet that are only coming alive through the act of our observing? A second sculpture dominates the second gallery space. Yet here, the table surface features a sizeable bump and is thus converted into an abstract landscape.
On one of the walls, a cast aluminium window with darkened screens and closed, red varnished shutters are visible. The window is held slightly ajar by a boy’s sneaker. This creates the illusion that the scene is part of an inhabited house, though it is above all else a sculpture. It is reminiscent of a stage prop, which unlike in a theatre, can also be seen from the rear.
This window, as well as another sculpture of a battered old chair, also made from cast aluminium, remerges in various works by Andro Wekua. For example, it is used in the digitally-retouched, ten-part photo series, Workshop Report. Workshop Report includes a photograph of a male model with very long legs, sitting on a chair and with his broken arm held across his chest. Each photograph is shot from a different perspective. Here, the special element is the digital editing which reinterprets Andro Wekua's technique, seen before in his collages and paintings, but in a new and self-contained manner. Those who remember Wekua’s film, "By the Window" (2008), will recognize this male figure.
In this exhibition, a duplication of time takes place, which is initiated with the title 28.August, the opening date. The observer cannot tell which part is narration and which part is duplication. We are not sure whether what we are seeing is the final moment or merely its shadow. Georg Seeßlen sheds some light on this: Man is no being that is one. The individual, undivided, is his dream,not his reality. He sees himself as split, continuously divided, and removed from himself. Here, he breaks up into body, soul and spirit, there, into gaze and image; here, he is the object of desire, there, the subject of love; here, he is what he seems to be, there, what he wants from himself. He is man and woman, history and nature; he is the being that needs image, mask and mirror. All his reverie, his story-telling, his creating have only two point of departure, the miracle of unity and the horror of never-ending division. This is why his world is populated by heroes, demons, and gods, by shadows and doppelgängers; this is why he is constantly searching for his counterpart – only in order to find himself. 1.)
Andro Wekua's solo exhibition “Workshop Report“ will be displayed in the Museion, Bozen, until September 25th and will be on display in Wiels, Brussels, from December 1st onwards. An artist book with the same title as the exhibition has been published by Verlag Walter König. We would like to mention another current publication which contains a conversation between Boris Groys and Andro Wekua. "Wait to Wait: A Conversation", published by Christoph Keller Editions/ JRP Ringier, 2009.
1.) from Georg Seeßlen: Dream Replicants of the Cinema in Rolf Aurich / Wolfgang Jacobsen (ed.): : Artificial Humans. Manic Machines. Controlled Bodies, Berlin, 2000, p.13
August 29 - October 17, 2009
Opening: Friday, August 28, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased to announce Andro Wekua's fourth solo exhibition in the gallery. With his current exhibition 28. August, Andro Wekua invites visitors to immerse themselves in a scenography in which new sculptures, paintings, collages, photographs and serigraphs feature equally. Although all the different elements have a strong relationship to each other, each work remains independent.
In the exhibition the visitors’ attention is directed towards a sculpture in the form of a table. A game takes place which the observer is already acquainted with from Andro Wekua's collages, but on neither a canvas nor a piece of paper, but on an aluminium object. The table surface has been turned into a colourful, marble-effect wax-colour cast. Two female hands, gripping two calves with dancing feet, are placed on top of it. Are the legs being prevented from running away? Are they being held like the legs of a doll or puppet that are only coming alive through the act of our observing? A second sculpture dominates the second gallery space. Yet here, the table surface features a sizeable bump and is thus converted into an abstract landscape.
On one of the walls, a cast aluminium window with darkened screens and closed, red varnished shutters are visible. The window is held slightly ajar by a boy’s sneaker. This creates the illusion that the scene is part of an inhabited house, though it is above all else a sculpture. It is reminiscent of a stage prop, which unlike in a theatre, can also be seen from the rear.
This window, as well as another sculpture of a battered old chair, also made from cast aluminium, remerges in various works by Andro Wekua. For example, it is used in the digitally-retouched, ten-part photo series, Workshop Report. Workshop Report includes a photograph of a male model with very long legs, sitting on a chair and with his broken arm held across his chest. Each photograph is shot from a different perspective. Here, the special element is the digital editing which reinterprets Andro Wekua's technique, seen before in his collages and paintings, but in a new and self-contained manner. Those who remember Wekua’s film, "By the Window" (2008), will recognize this male figure.
In this exhibition, a duplication of time takes place, which is initiated with the title 28.August, the opening date. The observer cannot tell which part is narration and which part is duplication. We are not sure whether what we are seeing is the final moment or merely its shadow. Georg Seeßlen sheds some light on this: Man is no being that is one. The individual, undivided, is his dream,not his reality. He sees himself as split, continuously divided, and removed from himself. Here, he breaks up into body, soul and spirit, there, into gaze and image; here, he is the object of desire, there, the subject of love; here, he is what he seems to be, there, what he wants from himself. He is man and woman, history and nature; he is the being that needs image, mask and mirror. All his reverie, his story-telling, his creating have only two point of departure, the miracle of unity and the horror of never-ending division. This is why his world is populated by heroes, demons, and gods, by shadows and doppelgängers; this is why he is constantly searching for his counterpart – only in order to find himself. 1.)
Andro Wekua's solo exhibition “Workshop Report“ will be displayed in the Museion, Bozen, until September 25th and will be on display in Wiels, Brussels, from December 1st onwards. An artist book with the same title as the exhibition has been published by Verlag Walter König. We would like to mention another current publication which contains a conversation between Boris Groys and Andro Wekua. "Wait to Wait: A Conversation", published by Christoph Keller Editions/ JRP Ringier, 2009.
1.) from Georg Seeßlen: Dream Replicants of the Cinema in Rolf Aurich / Wolfgang Jacobsen (ed.): : Artificial Humans. Manic Machines. Controlled Bodies, Berlin, 2000, p.13