Karl Haendel
11 Mar - 29 Apr 2011
KARL HAENDEL
Fiddle the Cooperation
11 March - 29 April, 2011
The world created by Karl Haendel (New York 1976, lives and works in Los Angeles) is expressed by the use of drawing, the pencil is in fact for the artist a translator of objectivity to crystallize, reverse and focus. Drawing is considered as writing, and in the artist, this need is inextricably combined to photography, to the observation and study of the contemporary world’s representation in all its various components: from the icons of all times to inanimate objects, from family photos in comic, from the ordinary everyday to the most significant historical events.
Through technical skill, meticulously sketched, Handel interrogates on how the interpretation of each image is filtered by cultural, social, political factors and how that same image can be metabolized by an observer, losing its meaning if matched to other ones, or if estranged from its original context. Hence the title "Fiddle the cooperation", Handel's first exhibition in Italy, a game of mutual sense shifting, caused by the connection between the numerous works on display, set up without interruption, as in a subjective stream of consciousness.
So a monumental knight, closed in his armor can be compared to a broken eggshell, in a sort of relationship between power and delicacy, male and female symbols. Or still, a scribble or heaped up elastic bands can simulate hilarity, confusion, abstraction, but also violence, moved by an impulsive gesture. The same instinct that with a rapid transit of graphite partially removes the figure of Pablo Picasso or breaks in two Barak Obama’s smile. Social criticism is related to a sharp humor, abstract coexists with figurative, the intimacy of a personal experience is related to the spectacle of politics. A chain of meanings and associations suggested by the artist that leave room for other possible interpretations, without ever weakening the perfection and loyalty of every single picture taken into consideration. A journey through the collective memory and a relative reality, a distance to cover through a singular universe in black and white.
Fiddle the Cooperation
11 March - 29 April, 2011
The world created by Karl Haendel (New York 1976, lives and works in Los Angeles) is expressed by the use of drawing, the pencil is in fact for the artist a translator of objectivity to crystallize, reverse and focus. Drawing is considered as writing, and in the artist, this need is inextricably combined to photography, to the observation and study of the contemporary world’s representation in all its various components: from the icons of all times to inanimate objects, from family photos in comic, from the ordinary everyday to the most significant historical events.
Through technical skill, meticulously sketched, Handel interrogates on how the interpretation of each image is filtered by cultural, social, political factors and how that same image can be metabolized by an observer, losing its meaning if matched to other ones, or if estranged from its original context. Hence the title "Fiddle the cooperation", Handel's first exhibition in Italy, a game of mutual sense shifting, caused by the connection between the numerous works on display, set up without interruption, as in a subjective stream of consciousness.
So a monumental knight, closed in his armor can be compared to a broken eggshell, in a sort of relationship between power and delicacy, male and female symbols. Or still, a scribble or heaped up elastic bands can simulate hilarity, confusion, abstraction, but also violence, moved by an impulsive gesture. The same instinct that with a rapid transit of graphite partially removes the figure of Pablo Picasso or breaks in two Barak Obama’s smile. Social criticism is related to a sharp humor, abstract coexists with figurative, the intimacy of a personal experience is related to the spectacle of politics. A chain of meanings and associations suggested by the artist that leave room for other possible interpretations, without ever weakening the perfection and loyalty of every single picture taken into consideration. A journey through the collective memory and a relative reality, a distance to cover through a singular universe in black and white.