Monique van Genderen, Shila Khatami, Ingo Meller
To Start a Painting
05 Jun - 13 Jul 2019
MONIQUE VAN GENDEREN, SHILA KHATAMI, INGO MELLER
To Start a Painting
5 June — 13 July 2019
Non-representational painting is not a unified field of production. Nonetheless, regular attention is paid to painterly questions formulated in the light of its historical, social and institutional framework. In many cases, parameters of current forms are considerations that reflect production and material just as much as the location of presentation. To Start a Painting brings together three of the most interesting positions in this field: Monique van Genderen, Shila Khatami and Ingo Meller.
The Canadian-American painter Monique van Genderen has developed a new, wall-filling work for the exhibition, which consists exclusively of retro-reflective foils commonly used in traffic. In it she asserts that images are also human and – one must inevitably conclude – want to be treated like that. In the same way, the Berlin painter Shila Khatami uses a technical surface. Her expansive installation of metal panels with car and metal protective lacquers refers to the workshop as a production location, while the painterly composition picks up motifs from the vocabulary of city re-appropriation such as graffiti or tags and relates them to forms of the traditions and methods of the avant-gardes of the 20th century. Both artists explore elements of space and illusion in the context of abstraction. One can say that they allow the surfaces and materials to negotiate the image plane almost on their own. The same applies to Ingo Meller. A considerable part of the traditional canvas, on which Meller applies his blocky, occasionally blurred color compositions, remains unpainted. At one and the same time, it blends with the wall and merges with the rich oil colors of the artist’s strictly analytical color gestures. These designs go far beyond mere aesthetics, because despite their severity, color and material have a life of their own and are therefore not entirely harmless.
With friendly support of rotec GmbH, Berlin
To Start a Painting
5 June — 13 July 2019
Non-representational painting is not a unified field of production. Nonetheless, regular attention is paid to painterly questions formulated in the light of its historical, social and institutional framework. In many cases, parameters of current forms are considerations that reflect production and material just as much as the location of presentation. To Start a Painting brings together three of the most interesting positions in this field: Monique van Genderen, Shila Khatami and Ingo Meller.
The Canadian-American painter Monique van Genderen has developed a new, wall-filling work for the exhibition, which consists exclusively of retro-reflective foils commonly used in traffic. In it she asserts that images are also human and – one must inevitably conclude – want to be treated like that. In the same way, the Berlin painter Shila Khatami uses a technical surface. Her expansive installation of metal panels with car and metal protective lacquers refers to the workshop as a production location, while the painterly composition picks up motifs from the vocabulary of city re-appropriation such as graffiti or tags and relates them to forms of the traditions and methods of the avant-gardes of the 20th century. Both artists explore elements of space and illusion in the context of abstraction. One can say that they allow the surfaces and materials to negotiate the image plane almost on their own. The same applies to Ingo Meller. A considerable part of the traditional canvas, on which Meller applies his blocky, occasionally blurred color compositions, remains unpainted. At one and the same time, it blends with the wall and merges with the rich oil colors of the artist’s strictly analytical color gestures. These designs go far beyond mere aesthetics, because despite their severity, color and material have a life of their own and are therefore not entirely harmless.
With friendly support of rotec GmbH, Berlin