Works on paper
30 Mar - 05 Jun 2010
WORKS ON PAPER
Johannes Kahrs - Mark Manders - Maria Serebriakova
March 30 - June 5, 2010
Wednesday through Saturday, 2 to 6 pm
Closed on Belgian legal Holidays:
May 1 and May 13
Preview Thursday April 29th, 6-9 pm
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to present a group exhibition of works on paper by Johannes Kahrs, Mark Manders and Maria Serebriakova.
Following his solo exhibition at the gallery, Mark Manders (°1968, Volkel, NL) now exhibits a new series of drawings. Manders’ drawings, often only pencil on paper, form an important part of his oeuvre in which each work is a fragment of what he describes as a ‘self-portrait as a building’. Manders’ drawings and sculptural installations form ‘memory spaces’ in which the thoughts and feelings of a fictive poetic self are materialized. For Manders, drawing is more an investigation of thought than an investigation of observation: ‘before I’ve drawn them, the drawings are often as short and compact as thoughts. It’s interesting to look at yourself from the outside as you were drawing and see how the thoughts you portray are partly visual and partly linguistic. The beautiful thing about a drawing is that you can seize it as an image in your mind, but the moment you want to comprehend the image, the drawing becomes spherical, and the mind can no longer illuminate it from all sides at the same time.’
Johannes Kahrs (°1965 Bremen, DE) shows two large, monochrome pastel drawings. His work confronts us with images that are difficult to place at first sight and focuses on the fragmentary representation of the human body, using a dark and intense colour palette and an uncommon framing and focus. ‘Untitled (portrait and sign)’ shows a portrait of a woman with downcast eyes. Her fingers, drawn in a sharp and contrasting way, are crossed in a sign and prominently placed on the foreground of the image. In ‘Untitled (young man with mask), a naked young man, seen from a low point of view and build up in blurring layers of pastel, looks at us through a small, black mask.
Both portraits are based on photographs in which the persons are exposed to the camera and the viewer in a brutal and direct way. The same violent exposure can be found in the pastels where the ambiguity of the image is nevertheless further intensified through the pictorial complexity of the works.
The works on paper by Maria Serebriakova (°1965 Moscow, RU) are subtly balanced compositions of common, everyday objects and silent sea and landscapes, painted in pale shades of grey, black and blue. Spheres and perforations reflecting and multiplating in vast waters, an undulating landscape painted in rhythmic brush strokes, a chair or transparent forms attached to branch-like structures, all breathe a particularly quiet atmosphere. The dull palette that is used enhances the overwhelming sense of stillness and ascesis. Rather than referring to concrete places, Serebriakova’s works can be seen as mental landscapes, projections and open territories of imaginary inscription, expressed in a sober and gentle artistic language.
Johannes Kahrs - Mark Manders - Maria Serebriakova
March 30 - June 5, 2010
Wednesday through Saturday, 2 to 6 pm
Closed on Belgian legal Holidays:
May 1 and May 13
Preview Thursday April 29th, 6-9 pm
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to present a group exhibition of works on paper by Johannes Kahrs, Mark Manders and Maria Serebriakova.
Following his solo exhibition at the gallery, Mark Manders (°1968, Volkel, NL) now exhibits a new series of drawings. Manders’ drawings, often only pencil on paper, form an important part of his oeuvre in which each work is a fragment of what he describes as a ‘self-portrait as a building’. Manders’ drawings and sculptural installations form ‘memory spaces’ in which the thoughts and feelings of a fictive poetic self are materialized. For Manders, drawing is more an investigation of thought than an investigation of observation: ‘before I’ve drawn them, the drawings are often as short and compact as thoughts. It’s interesting to look at yourself from the outside as you were drawing and see how the thoughts you portray are partly visual and partly linguistic. The beautiful thing about a drawing is that you can seize it as an image in your mind, but the moment you want to comprehend the image, the drawing becomes spherical, and the mind can no longer illuminate it from all sides at the same time.’
Johannes Kahrs (°1965 Bremen, DE) shows two large, monochrome pastel drawings. His work confronts us with images that are difficult to place at first sight and focuses on the fragmentary representation of the human body, using a dark and intense colour palette and an uncommon framing and focus. ‘Untitled (portrait and sign)’ shows a portrait of a woman with downcast eyes. Her fingers, drawn in a sharp and contrasting way, are crossed in a sign and prominently placed on the foreground of the image. In ‘Untitled (young man with mask), a naked young man, seen from a low point of view and build up in blurring layers of pastel, looks at us through a small, black mask.
Both portraits are based on photographs in which the persons are exposed to the camera and the viewer in a brutal and direct way. The same violent exposure can be found in the pastels where the ambiguity of the image is nevertheless further intensified through the pictorial complexity of the works.
The works on paper by Maria Serebriakova (°1965 Moscow, RU) are subtly balanced compositions of common, everyday objects and silent sea and landscapes, painted in pale shades of grey, black and blue. Spheres and perforations reflecting and multiplating in vast waters, an undulating landscape painted in rhythmic brush strokes, a chair or transparent forms attached to branch-like structures, all breathe a particularly quiet atmosphere. The dull palette that is used enhances the overwhelming sense of stillness and ascesis. Rather than referring to concrete places, Serebriakova’s works can be seen as mental landscapes, projections and open territories of imaginary inscription, expressed in a sober and gentle artistic language.