Volker Eichelmann
31 Jan - 23 Mar 2013
VOLKER EICHELMANN
LADY CANE-BUSHIER PRESENTS...
31 January - 23 March 2013
Ancient & Modern invites you to ‘Lady Cane-bushier’, the first solo show by volker Eichelmann at the gallery.
Transformed into a hessian-lined jewel chamber or cabinet, Eichelmann creates a series of large-scale intricate decoupages of imaginary flowers mounted on black gloss paper that have been painstakingly cut and assembled from gardening and jewellery books. Their edges and surfaces are further coloured with watercolour to both flatten, manipulate and make more ambiguous their handcraftedness.
As objects, they emerge from an elaborate 18th-century pastime made particularly prominent in britain by the ‘paper mosaicks’ of Mary delany (1700-1788).
Eichelmann’s interest in this period extends from the architecture of the classical country house to the writings and diary-entries of the mid 20th-century characters who inhabited them, Just as Fabergé attempts through a kind of alchemy to transcend prosaic worldly associations, Eichelmann’s flowers, whose names are reminiscent of characters from Ronald Firbank’s prose, attempt to outwit their humble origins and a traditional notion of collage, parallel perhaps to the aspirations des Esseintes had for his orchids to out-fake their imitations in J.k.huysmans ‘A Rebours’ (1884).
LADY CANE-BUSHIER PRESENTS...
31 January - 23 March 2013
Ancient & Modern invites you to ‘Lady Cane-bushier’, the first solo show by volker Eichelmann at the gallery.
Transformed into a hessian-lined jewel chamber or cabinet, Eichelmann creates a series of large-scale intricate decoupages of imaginary flowers mounted on black gloss paper that have been painstakingly cut and assembled from gardening and jewellery books. Their edges and surfaces are further coloured with watercolour to both flatten, manipulate and make more ambiguous their handcraftedness.
As objects, they emerge from an elaborate 18th-century pastime made particularly prominent in britain by the ‘paper mosaicks’ of Mary delany (1700-1788).
Eichelmann’s interest in this period extends from the architecture of the classical country house to the writings and diary-entries of the mid 20th-century characters who inhabited them, Just as Fabergé attempts through a kind of alchemy to transcend prosaic worldly associations, Eichelmann’s flowers, whose names are reminiscent of characters from Ronald Firbank’s prose, attempt to outwit their humble origins and a traditional notion of collage, parallel perhaps to the aspirations des Esseintes had for his orchids to out-fake their imitations in J.k.huysmans ‘A Rebours’ (1884).