Martin Janda

Giuseppe Gabellone, Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler

23 Oct - 06 Dec 2009

© Giuseppe Gabellone
Ohne Titel, 2009
Digitaldruck
52 x 35 cm
GIUSEPPE GABELLONE, CHRISTINE & IRENE HOHENBÜCHLER

Galerie Martin Janda will be showing a new group of works by Giuseppe Gabellone and Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler, from 23 October to 5 December 2009.

In his third solo show at Galerie Martin Janda, the 36-year-old Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gabellone presents a new series of eight small-format colour photographs (2009).
Each of these images depicts a printed fabric sheet fastened on to a metal construction. The cloth banners have been attached to thin metal frames, but appear much too large for them. The wind puffs the sheets up like sails, causing the objects to look even more sculptural. They refuse to adopt a perfect shape at any point; also they never acquire even a hint of being an advertising hoarding. The objects were positioned within industrial wastelands and various interstitial zones of Parisian suburbs before being photographed there – in areas that were devoid of people, completely anonymous, yet also projecting the idea of some sort of a wild and unfettered freedom. Although only a small segment of these places is discernible in each of the photographs, they are important points of reference within the series, expanding, as they do, the motifs employed on the fabrics, such as details from found pictures of children at play or of cloudlike structures. One of the images depicts one particular aspect of a metal casting process.
All of Giuseppe Gabellone’s works have always been conceived in a very sculptural way. The contextual references arise within a confrontation between formal aspects and technical inventions and through surprising expansions or juxtapositions of motifs.

On the upper and lower floors of the gallery we are showing new drawings, works on fabric and sculptures by the twin sisters Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler (born in 1964.)

Hämatom, to spot ... and ...Spur, Fleck, Mal... (... Trace, Spot, Mole...) are some of the titles of the works on paper, which combine watercolour painting and calligraphy (all from 2009). The motif of the “spot”, which keeps recurring in the works of the sisters – be it in the shape of the image carrier in some of the works on canvas or as the subject of other pictures – also appears here on the colourful plinths that function as the bases of some rather delicate sculptures. The sculptures derive part of their inspiration from pieces of furniture, yet, positioned on the small, amorphous pedestals, they playfully shake off any sense of functionality and remain poised, in stiffly rigid, straight positions. They may also be seen as representative of people and their psychological states-of-being, thus turning themselves into “figurative plastic art.” They, too, bear inscriptions of words or writing, expanding, in their way, the poetic dramaturgy by new aspects, “injecting”, “delineating”, and creating new translations.
The sewn textile works are reminiscent of abstract painting and complement the exhibition, particularly in their contrastive stance towards the monochromatic, smooth surfaces of the plinths, by adding a further material quality.
 

Tags: Giuseppe Gabellone, Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler