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Raïssa Venables

Maybe too lofty? 05.12.2008 – 17.01.2009 Opening reception with the artist on Friday, December 5, 7-10 p.m. Since the Renaissance we have become used to seeing spaces in painting in perspective. What slowly appears in Pre-Renaissance Italy with Giotto’s new spatial perception find its zenith with Brunelleschi with the invention of central perspective around 1420. The painted space is constructed mathematically towards a vanishing point. The pictorial alignment of all objects in it conforms to an illusionist rendition of reality. This is no different in the later appearing photography; the mathematical construction is replaced by the laws of the optic lens. The works of Raissa Venables break the photographic laws of optics as the artist procures a new freedom in the arrangement of the picture through digital processing and intervention. The works of Venables recall medieval thematic perspective. Spaces and objects are represented according to their spiritual significance, not their natural appearance. This is assisted by the artist’s expressive choice of colour. What appears formally like a regression in the dealing with spaces, is the order for Venables: while her early work were set primarily in private, intimate spaces, in her new exhibition the artist shows large and public places. Mundane and sacred spaces are the theme of “Maybe too lofty?”. Venables explores the unconscious experience we have in such spaces with acute sensibility and gives them an outlet. The artist traces the places and ends up in a new “thematic perspective”, which corresponds much more to a anthropological way of seeing. Her newest works have a formal and colourful elegance. They guide us through big train station cathedrals, into century-old churches and hidden temples. All places are “lofty”. One must only be able to see. With her new solo exhibition Raissa Venables gives us back a piece of the ability to see. More works as PDF on   http://www.sendspace.com/file/1fxy87 _________________________________________________________________________________________

Helena Blomqvist

The last Golden Frog October 17 – November 29, 2008 Helena Blomqvists (Sweden,*1975) photo collages are complex woven fabrics of figures, artifacts, symbols and citations. An exciting mix of philosophical contemplation on the one hand and off-key humour on the other. Yet the photos reveal their special magic at the point where the arranged and digitally edited scenes suddenly appear to be like the surroundings in which the photographs are hung. The border between reality and fiction seems to melt. The viewer can change almost playfully between the layers of reality and imagination. Even Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren did not carry her readers off to new worlds more beautifully. Once upon a time… Like a scene from a fairy tale. A boy entwined with red flowers sits like a knight on a Lama. In front of him, as his companion, sits a fully dressed monkey, and together they look towards an adventure. Despite a fantastic and slightly odd impression one can subliminally sense an approaching catastrophe. Each photographic arrangement shows a drama in a particular situation. As if in a perpetual snapshot of life we see departure, sadness, companionship – and time and again darkness. As in her previous series, Helena Blomqvist captures the archetypes of our collective photographic memory. The reference to photographic practice of the 20th century is shown for example in the standardised group picture with soldiers, in the arrangement as well as the colouring. If the protagonists were not apes the pictures might have been taken out of a photo album of the First World War. Or are we actually dealing with a scene from Planet of the Apes? Blomqvist lays down many different visual tracks. In the end however the view again becomes free for the mechanisms of memory through photography. It used to be… Helena Blomqvist has already exhibited very successfully in Scandinavia; Gallery Wagner + Partner present her first solo exhibition in Germany in the context of the Third European Month of Photography in Berlin. http://www.mdf-berlin.de A catalogue is available or the PDF Catalogue_Blomqvist.pdf, (1 MB) is waiting for download at: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ldntjh _________________________________________________________________________________________

I just wanted you to love me

Peter Dreher, Natascha Stellmach & SPAM the musical 05.09. – 11.10.2008

Where would pop culture be without its immortal Dead? Is death itself already Pop? Recently the artist Natascha Stellmach acquired the ashes of former Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, who passed away in 1994. Ignited by this, her new installation encompasses photographic works and objects that investigate suicide, near death and the question of what remains after death. For one work, ‘set me free’ was written in the ashes and scanned. In another, Kurt Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus and the Brothers Grimm meet in a hallucinogenic twilight zone, the words of the story printed in tainted shades of grey, on black. And in an antique cigarette case engraved with ‘Gone.’, a joint made of ash and hash waits for its liberating ritual. For several years Peter Dreher has also been preoccupied with the subject of death, although ostensibly. The renowned artist of the series, ‘Tag um Tag, guter Tag’ (Day by day is a good day), who has painted the same drinking glass since 1974, here covers meters of paper in human skulls. These gouaches, through their bleeding surfaces, reveal the remarkable form of the skull. Only within the context of the distinct outline do the abstract areas of colour convey meaning. Through Dreher’s serial layering, death becomes more abstract and loses its terror. Don’t his skulls grin? In contrast, email spam seems immortal and celebrates its 30th birthday this year. In the cross-media project, ‘SPAM the musical’ anonymous artists have made spam both their artistic subject and method. Spam emails were collected for two years to become scripts for video art. These 5-minute videos with titles such as ‘The Lonely Girls’ or ‘The Lottery’ are presented entertainingly and their promises visualised operatically. Still spam also has its dark side. In each video’s second part, ‘deleted scenes’, illusions about love and desire are rapidly broken. You find ‘SPAM the musical’ everywhere on the web, in your spam filter or http://www.spamthemusical.com .