INNES, MELLER, MUNDT, ZANDVLIET, ZAUGG

Posted on 2012-05-07

What is painting supposed to mean when it will not serve as artistic tool to create fanciful imagery, how can artists use painting as a media to create new artistic ideas, how does painting become investigative to perception?
Five artist and five different artistic positions give answers, each in his way to these questions: demanding, ambivalent, radical, provocative.

Callum Innes, born 1962 in Edinburgh, Scotland, lives and works in Edinburgh. Wilhelm Mundt, born 1959 in Grevenbroich, Germany, lives and works in Cologne. Ingo Meller, born 1955 in Cologne, lives and works in Berlin. Robert Zandvliet, born 1970 Terband, The Netherlands, lives and works in Rotterdam. Rémy Zaugg, born 1943 in Courgenay, Switzerland, died 2005 in Basel

Opposite – Ingo Meller, 2010/07

Exhibition runs through to July 28th, 2012

Bernhard Knaus Fine Art
Niddastrasse 84, 1st Floor
60329 Frankfurt
Germany

www.bernhardknaus-art.de

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CHRISTOPHER HANLON – DISSEMINATUS

Posted on 2012-05-07

In common with the Fairy Inkap Coprinus Disseminatus (a subject to which Hanlon has returned at regular intervals in his paintings) the artist’s preferred support is organic matter – most usually linen stretched over wooden board – which has served a previous function and is found in a state of disuse, now ready to provide the breeding ground for a new and unfamiliar lifeform.

Mushrooms are essential – without them ground is not fertile and plants don’t grow. Mushrooms are ephemeral – some species even grow over night silently and unseen only to disappear the next day in the rain. The Fairy Inkcap Coprinus Disseminatus, sometimes called the Trouping Inkcap or Trooping Crumble Cap, is a species that forms dense masses on rotting tree stumps and roots. These gregarious little fungi occur from early spring until the onset of winter, and they are at their most spectacular when the caps are young and pale – sometimes nearly pure white. It takes just two or three days for young white caps to turn grey and then begin blackening. Dessiminati will then scatter and broadcast their spores as delicately, mysteriously and as widely as possible, spreading spores almost like a rumour which gets more and more distorted as it circulates until its origin becomes unknowable and untraceable.

Opposite – Back, 2012

Exhibition runs through to June 2nd, 2012

Domobaal
3 John Street
London
WC1N 2ES

www.domobaal.com

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FIONA RAE

Posted on 2012-05-07

In 2004, when Rae visited Tokyo and reconnected with visual aspects of her peripatetic childhood in Asia, her lexicon further broadened to include small figures or cartoons whose status is left intriguingly ambiguous. Like Caspar David Friedrich’s human presences in an overwhelming landscape, they serve to point up the metaphysical and artificial dimensions of abstract painting, whilst also providing an empathetic point of identification for the viewer that invokes a more personal reading.

In using elements that might be considered girlish or otherwise unserious, Fiona Rae looks to re-examine their meaning and expressive possibilities from what could be seen as a feminist perspective. In more recent paintings, these ludicrous yet gnomic images might be thrust into passages of expressive brushwork, layered and dense, or caught in black calligraphic drawing inspired by Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, to produce dramatic and emotive compositions. Her recent titles often purport to be exclamations or statements, but like her paintings, they elude definitive explanation and can appear simultaneously dark and charming, anxious and insouciant.

Opposite – Angel, 2000

Exhibition runs through to August 26th, 2012

Leeds Art Gallery
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AA

www.leeds.gov.uk

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