2010

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Matthew Bown Gallery
Keithstrasse 10
10787 Berlin

+49 30 2145 8294/5

mail@matthewbown.com

U-Bahn: Wittenbergplatz

Open 12-6, Tuesday-Saturday, during exhibitions

Evgeni Dybsky, Niklas Goldbach, Thomas Fischer, Sandra Lange, Monika Rechsteiner, Richard Wilson

Time, space... meh!

03.02.10-06.03.10
Tuesday to Saturday, 12.00-18.00

Private view: Wednesday 3 February, 18.00-21.00


When the plastic surgeon says he can make you look ten years younger, he’s lying. When the architect says remodelling your Victorian flat will be as easy as slicing up a piece of cheddar cheese, he’s lying. What’s a dreamer to do?

Evgeni Dybsky’s Giotto Project is, in the artist’s words, a “dialogue with history”, specifically, with the frescoes by Giotto in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi. On canvases the same size as Giotto's originals, Giotto is 'sublimated'. As the artist puts it: we like to tell our beloved about our fantasies - even fantasies about form. Dybsky has worked in Berlin since 2009. Works in the Giotto Project were first shown at the Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, in 2009.

In his video and print works Niklas Goldbach focuses on dystopic aspects and designs of the post-modern urban milieu. Goldbach's protagonists – the "representatives" –  are caught between time and space: the last (or first) inhabitants of post-liberal nostalgia, to be endured only by those with a sense of mission. At "Time, Space...Meh" Goldbach shows a new two channel video installation "Plot", a work oscillating between closeness and distance, participation and violence. Goldbach works in Berlin. Goldbach had a solo show recently at Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen; and will participate in Rohkunstbau 2010.

Thomas Fischer’s paintings have the thingy presence of modernist abstraction. Yet they emerge from an ocean of photographs and mass-produced imagery.  They tenderly reference the contemporary media space (somewhere in which is a place for the artist himself) much as icon-painting references heaven. Fischer works in Berlin. Fischer's most recent solo shows were Fischertechnik Vol. 2, Kunstverein, Bochum, and at Galerie Robert Drees (both 2009).

In Sandra Lange’s painting linear-geometric forms, elements of architectural structure and glimpses of perspective co-exist with painterly marks – as it were, fluctuations of handwriting that also speak of materiality and process. Colour moves freely through these two meshed realms, like a citizen with dual nationality. Lange works in Berlin. She recently received the NaFöG stipendium.

Monika Rechsteiner’s contrariwise (andererseits) is a 20-minute film with soundtrack by Pit Gutmann which examines an abandoned industrial site in the former GDR. The film’s aesthetic is almost that of a painter in love with the textures of decay and obsessed with vision, observation and memory, all of which are put into question as the camera travels through the building. Rechsteiner recently participated in Heimspiel at Kunstmuseum St Gallen; her film 61 Minutes, 27 Stations, co-authored with Benjamin Krieg, will be shown during the Night of the Opera and Theatre in Berlin on 10 April.

Richard Wilson’s Turning The Place Over is one of the most remarkable pieces of public art made in recent years: a huge section of an office building is cut out and twisted through three dimensions in space by a mechanism designed for use in the nuclear power industry (watch on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXwA0gcBm4). The artist's film Turning The Place Over was made by placing two video cameras on the rotating disc of the facade. The result is an elegant, enigmatic, journey through urban space. Wilson works in London. His work 20:50 is currently on display in the Saatchi Gallery, London.