Kunstverein München

Ian Kiaer

10 Jun - 29 Aug 2010

© Ian Kiaer. Endnote, pink (yellow frieze), installation detail, Kunstverein München, 2010 / Foto: Wilfried Petzi
IAN KIAER
"Endnote, pink"
June 10 - August 29, 2010

With the exhibition Endnote, pink, Kunstverein München is introducing a new body of work by London based artist Ian Kiaer (*1971 in London). Kiaer is known for his spatial installations of found objects and materials that are carefully placed on and around the gallery floors. With Endnote, pink, the artist enjoys his first solo-exhibition in a German institution. For this particular occasion Ian Kiaer has developed 6 new installations that are directly inspired by the exhibition spaces of Kunstverein München.

Endnote, pink features used frames and stretchers covered with materials such as found fabrics, silver foil or a sheet of yellow latex. The frames hang in close proximity to objects that suggest a human dimension or use, such as a chair, a mat, a table or a pink bin. These objects lead to more spatial assemblages on the gallery floors, combining old electrical wires, used sheets of rubber, and a block of polystyrene. These objects outside the gallery walls could easily be overlooked as ‘trash’, but through careful placement in the spaces of the Kunstverein München transformed into an aesthetic composition.

Especially for his Munich exhibition, Ian Kiaer re-visits the historic juxtaposition between readymade practises and the syntax of painting, in particular still-life painting. However, the artist does this without privileging one above the other. Kiaer treats the two iconic practises on an equal basis, and moulds them to a practise well known to a younger generation of conceptual artists: a practise of fragmentation and cultural re-presentation. The ‘endnote’ in the title of the exhibition can therefore be employed in a literal sense: as a qualifying addition to a history that has been written and re-written many times before.

Endnote, pink features the end stage of two consecutive projects at Kunstverein München that explore the role of painting within a young generation of conceptual artists.
 

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