Eva Berendes
14 Mar - 18 Apr 2015
© Eva Berendes
Untitled (Assemblage 5), 2015, detail
steel, paint, poster, bicycle lock
247 x 158 x 72 cm
Untitled (Assemblage 5), 2015, detail
steel, paint, poster, bicycle lock
247 x 158 x 72 cm
EVA BERENDES
Stations
14 March – 18 April 2015
In her third solo exhibition at Sommer & Kohl Eva Berendes presents a group of new works combining painted steel tubing, grilles, prints and found objects into pictorial assemblages. As sorts of “still lives of public space” these constellations pick up on the semi-random fashion in which visual information converges in the urban sphere in form of guidance systems, fences, playground equipment, advertising billboards and architectural elements. Other objects are added that seem to give away anecdotal evidence: a glove that has been lost, a rope that has sunk into a puddle. Inspired by, mostly unintentional, design gestures and accidental overlays that she comes across – and by a design of radical pragmatism – the artist singles out moments that emerge as powerful and direct interventions in front of an aesthetic backdrop.
Rather than transferring the actual outdoor elements into the gallery space or meticulously recreating them, Berendes follows their creative and constructive principles and considers them in relation to the history of painting. Colour, texture, surface, composition, the layering of fore- and background, and the relationship between image and support are the quintessential painting issues the artist affiliates with her referents. Through selecting and combining materials she bases the works on phenomena of everyday culture while at the same time unfolding ways in which an image can be constituted – in terms of composition, colour, and physicality, with cable ties, screws, welding, knotting, etc.
The series is traversed by allusions to a postmodern design vocabulary evoked not only by a pastel and bright colour scheme and a formal language representing a kind of “irrational” geometry. Also the independence of the medium (painting) – of particular materials or production techniques, such as paint and canvas or the act of painting – is presented by the artist as an achievement of the sceptical postmodern point of view, in return closely intertwined with the commercial and banal. The reciprocal influencing between art and consumer culture in postmodernism has let their visual codes become inseparable – but not necessarily their real life practicalities. The motif of a Mondrian painting for example has featured in the design of a hair gel tube and an Yves Saint Laurent collection and is inextricably associated with these appropriations. Yet, the very objects as such will hardly be confused with pictures and hung onto the wall. It is these discrepancies that the artist deals with and through which she seeks to shed light on the ultimate validity of categories such as image, infrastructure, decoration and still life as horizons of visual contemplation.
Stations
14 March – 18 April 2015
In her third solo exhibition at Sommer & Kohl Eva Berendes presents a group of new works combining painted steel tubing, grilles, prints and found objects into pictorial assemblages. As sorts of “still lives of public space” these constellations pick up on the semi-random fashion in which visual information converges in the urban sphere in form of guidance systems, fences, playground equipment, advertising billboards and architectural elements. Other objects are added that seem to give away anecdotal evidence: a glove that has been lost, a rope that has sunk into a puddle. Inspired by, mostly unintentional, design gestures and accidental overlays that she comes across – and by a design of radical pragmatism – the artist singles out moments that emerge as powerful and direct interventions in front of an aesthetic backdrop.
Rather than transferring the actual outdoor elements into the gallery space or meticulously recreating them, Berendes follows their creative and constructive principles and considers them in relation to the history of painting. Colour, texture, surface, composition, the layering of fore- and background, and the relationship between image and support are the quintessential painting issues the artist affiliates with her referents. Through selecting and combining materials she bases the works on phenomena of everyday culture while at the same time unfolding ways in which an image can be constituted – in terms of composition, colour, and physicality, with cable ties, screws, welding, knotting, etc.
The series is traversed by allusions to a postmodern design vocabulary evoked not only by a pastel and bright colour scheme and a formal language representing a kind of “irrational” geometry. Also the independence of the medium (painting) – of particular materials or production techniques, such as paint and canvas or the act of painting – is presented by the artist as an achievement of the sceptical postmodern point of view, in return closely intertwined with the commercial and banal. The reciprocal influencing between art and consumer culture in postmodernism has let their visual codes become inseparable – but not necessarily their real life practicalities. The motif of a Mondrian painting for example has featured in the design of a hair gel tube and an Yves Saint Laurent collection and is inextricably associated with these appropriations. Yet, the very objects as such will hardly be confused with pictures and hung onto the wall. It is these discrepancies that the artist deals with and through which she seeks to shed light on the ultimate validity of categories such as image, infrastructure, decoration and still life as horizons of visual contemplation.