Mariana Castillo Deball & Simone Schardt
17 Apr - 29 May 2010
MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL & SIMONE SCHARDT
April 17 - May 29, 2010
Opening: April 16th, 6 - 8 pm
We are delighted to present works by Mariana Castillo Deball (1975, Mexico) and Simone Schardt (1971, Germany) together in one exhibition. Both artists share an interest in science: Schardt deals with the collection of methodological insight and the graphic elucidation of scientific theories. In her accurate drawings, she imitates, re-interprets, and spoofs psychoanalytical diagrams. It is astonishing, how sober and pragmatic graphs unfold their poetic grace. Deball, on the other hand, analyzes classification and categorization methods of scientific research. Her investigation of art-museum archives and collections of natural science institutions are source for objects, photographs, videos, and performances.
Mariana Castillo Deball
Mariana Castillo Deball’s work is characterized by the tension between order and coincidence. The Mexican artist maps out areas of action and memories as well as object worlds that often display a specific historical and cultural context. During her research, the artist looks for institutions that house collections, classifications, catalogues and (re-)presentations of cultural assets, such as libraries, museums and archives, and which represent a symbolic classification of the world. She also creates apparently banal visual investigations, which are brought into unexpected coherence through narrative wit and tactile precision. Mariana Castillo Deball is thereby able to solve one of the most demanding challenges of contemporary art: to combine conceptual asperity and intellectual requirement with a sensual and innovative aesthetic.
- Giovanni Carmine
Download - CV of Mariana Castillo Deball
Simone Schardt:
“An idiosyncratic relationship to Conceptual Art, to the Unconscious structured as language and Self” (2008/2009)
Simone Schardt’s drawings precisely displayed on museum tables and showcases seem strangely cryptic and are in their formal astringency reminiscent of Conceptual Art. On small yellowed papers, Schardt meticulously arranges diagrams and rhomb patterns. Often a typewrite is used to place single letters or words into these quasi-mathematical equations. Consequently, an untitled 8 x 4 inch drawing shows two interlaced circles known from arithmetic intersections. With typewriter, Schardt has written “SEIN - SUBJEKT” (existence - subject) into one circle and “SINN - DAS ANDERE” (sense - the other) into another circle, while she titles the intersection area in-between them as “NICHT-SEIN” (non-existence). Each individual drawing is placed in a complex array with other sketches. Thus, Schardt creates a system of symbols referring to Conceptual Art, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and linguistic. Her protagonist, the French psychoanalytic Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), defines the subject as “fragmented mosaic” in the post-modern tradition instead of the concept of the subject as a whole. Schardt’s method of work and field of interest stands within the tradition of artists like Mary Kelly, who, just like Schardt, also functions as writer and teacher.
“An idiosyncratic relationship to Conceptual Art, to the Unconscious structured as language and Self” operates as a kind of assembly set, inasmuch as Schardt resorts to art-strategies that were substantially employed in Conceptual Art. She does not, however, merely re-activate the formal vocabulary and representational methods of Conceptual Art, but also parodies those with ironic work titles. Schardt uses a “hyper-authenticity” to stage her works but likewise disrupts this impression within the drawings themselves: coffee stains on the paper, for instance, develop an aquarell-like character and lend individuality to the works. Schardt’s oeuvre manifests a fractured association to the theories of Conceptual Art, on the one hand re-activating them while on the other questioning them by means of subversive caricatures.
- Raphael Gygax
April 17 - May 29, 2010
Opening: April 16th, 6 - 8 pm
We are delighted to present works by Mariana Castillo Deball (1975, Mexico) and Simone Schardt (1971, Germany) together in one exhibition. Both artists share an interest in science: Schardt deals with the collection of methodological insight and the graphic elucidation of scientific theories. In her accurate drawings, she imitates, re-interprets, and spoofs psychoanalytical diagrams. It is astonishing, how sober and pragmatic graphs unfold their poetic grace. Deball, on the other hand, analyzes classification and categorization methods of scientific research. Her investigation of art-museum archives and collections of natural science institutions are source for objects, photographs, videos, and performances.
Mariana Castillo Deball
Mariana Castillo Deball’s work is characterized by the tension between order and coincidence. The Mexican artist maps out areas of action and memories as well as object worlds that often display a specific historical and cultural context. During her research, the artist looks for institutions that house collections, classifications, catalogues and (re-)presentations of cultural assets, such as libraries, museums and archives, and which represent a symbolic classification of the world. She also creates apparently banal visual investigations, which are brought into unexpected coherence through narrative wit and tactile precision. Mariana Castillo Deball is thereby able to solve one of the most demanding challenges of contemporary art: to combine conceptual asperity and intellectual requirement with a sensual and innovative aesthetic.
- Giovanni Carmine
Download - CV of Mariana Castillo Deball
Simone Schardt:
“An idiosyncratic relationship to Conceptual Art, to the Unconscious structured as language and Self” (2008/2009)
Simone Schardt’s drawings precisely displayed on museum tables and showcases seem strangely cryptic and are in their formal astringency reminiscent of Conceptual Art. On small yellowed papers, Schardt meticulously arranges diagrams and rhomb patterns. Often a typewrite is used to place single letters or words into these quasi-mathematical equations. Consequently, an untitled 8 x 4 inch drawing shows two interlaced circles known from arithmetic intersections. With typewriter, Schardt has written “SEIN - SUBJEKT” (existence - subject) into one circle and “SINN - DAS ANDERE” (sense - the other) into another circle, while she titles the intersection area in-between them as “NICHT-SEIN” (non-existence). Each individual drawing is placed in a complex array with other sketches. Thus, Schardt creates a system of symbols referring to Conceptual Art, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and linguistic. Her protagonist, the French psychoanalytic Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), defines the subject as “fragmented mosaic” in the post-modern tradition instead of the concept of the subject as a whole. Schardt’s method of work and field of interest stands within the tradition of artists like Mary Kelly, who, just like Schardt, also functions as writer and teacher.
“An idiosyncratic relationship to Conceptual Art, to the Unconscious structured as language and Self” operates as a kind of assembly set, inasmuch as Schardt resorts to art-strategies that were substantially employed in Conceptual Art. She does not, however, merely re-activate the formal vocabulary and representational methods of Conceptual Art, but also parodies those with ironic work titles. Schardt uses a “hyper-authenticity” to stage her works but likewise disrupts this impression within the drawings themselves: coffee stains on the paper, for instance, develop an aquarell-like character and lend individuality to the works. Schardt’s oeuvre manifests a fractured association to the theories of Conceptual Art, on the one hand re-activating them while on the other questioning them by means of subversive caricatures.
- Raphael Gygax