CLAIRE KERR
2014-09-08The style Kerr has chosen as her vehicle of expression might easily place her in classical and traditional light, comparing her all the way back to French and English landscape artists and further to the Dutch masters. And although she does allude to the great history of art before her, the perspective she takes is based on current interests and questions, and on how technology and quotidian life affects the way we consume these histories, how they inform our visual experiences. The subject matter of her paintings may be still-lifes or landscapes, and even portraits, but at the same time they are not, for instead they are commentaries on how we perceive these traditions in today’s environment. This places Claire Kerr’s work firmly within context of contemporary art and its conceptual concerns.
The body of work Kerr has created for this show manifests what she had been thinking about while working on them; “the strange, ambiguous borderlands between a conceptual, imagined object and its materialization”, and the title she has chosen for the exhibition reflects this very mind-set as well.
“Molecule (limonene)” is a painting of a chemical compound model, a scientific object created to visualize something we recognize more easily as a familiar odor present in many cleaning products and air fresheners. And “Falling Man (after Hubert Robert)” might be a direct copy of a 18th century painting were it not for the precise recreation of the craquelure that age has left on its surface, and thus placing focus on “time” and its effects. As with these works, it is in the subtle details that the conceptual depth shines through in all of Kerr’s paintings.
Opposite – Eclipse, 2014
Exhibition runs through to October 11th, 2014
Galerie Stefan Röpke
St. Apern-Straße 17-21
50667 Cologne
Germany
