Preview: POST-STUDIO TALES

Artforum, February 2012: Yngve Holen at Autocenter

"Yngve Holen at Autocenter, Berlin" in Artforum International Magazine (February 2012).

Artforum, January 2012: Viktoria Binschtok at Klemm's

"Viktoria Binschtok at Klemm's Berlin" in Artforum International Magazine (January 2012).

Art Agenda: Laura Horelli at Galerie Barbara Weiss

"Laura Horelli's 'The Terrace' at Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin" on Art Agenda (December 14, 2011).


To read the review, visit: http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/laura-horelli’s-“the-terrace”/
The gallery's website: http://www.galeriebarbaraweiss.de/

Texte zur Kunst: Blake Rayne at Capitain Petzel

"Mode of Production: On Blake Rayne at Capitain Petzel, Berlin" in Texte zur Kunst (Heft 84 - Dezember 2011). 


For more information, visit: http://www.textezurkunst.de/84/
The gallery's website: http://www.capitainpetzel.de/exhibitionspress_17_1.html

Spike, Winter 2011: Christian Falsnaes at PSM

"Christian Falsnaes at PSM, Berlin" in spike Art Quarterly (Issue 30 - Winter 2011).


For more information, visit: http://spikeart.at/index.php?option=com_magazine&func=show_article&id=138&lang=en
The gallery's website: http://www.psm-gallery.com/node/121

BOTH BEING GIVEN

BOTH BEING GIVEN

On CAMERON ROWLAND BOTH TOGETHER WITH JOHN BEESON

Along the line where two planes meet, a space is formed. Across the seam where two pages connect, a narrative unfolds. With his recent exhibition at deuxpiece in Basel, Switzerland (30 September-02 October, 2011), Cameron Rowland laid claim to these boundaries; through his installation, he commanded the exhibition architecture, he manipulated viewers’ perception of space, and he spoke through a visual language that was multivalent in relaying the meaning of his participation and his contribution.

Calling upon various approaches to artistic agency, Rowland sometimes laid out his subjects in direct address, and he sometimes enunciated his subjects by complementing them with alternate versions. On the other hand, he periodically also obscured the primary subject through reproductive processes. In other moments, still, the artist intentionally obscured the legibility of meaning––either through the construction of an illusion or through formal obscuration. Of fundamental importance to the artist’s concerns, the making of something illegible or the shrouding of something in darkness was a racially politicized act.

In the photographic works Spiritual 1 and Studio views with White Negress and others, hands––those body parts that are responsible for grasping and manipulating objects and which are capable of symbolically indicating a state of mind, feeling, or, simply, one’s presence––specifically black hands, recede and become indiscernible among black cloth or the dark space surrounding the edges of a book. Black forms stand in stark contrast against white surrounds; however, whiteness exhibits the ability to dominate and redefine. In Spiritual 1, the white paint that the studio model has been photographed stepping into seeps into the black fabric in which he is shrouded both at his feet and at the crown of his head, where he has “baptized” himself. In this way, following the language used by the artist in describing the activity, one can see that the work’s formal language reflects on a dominant institution in our society, one which has had a particular impact on black culture, historically: namely, Christianity. The thought that this history of dominance is local to the United States, where Rowland was born and raised, is, of course, leveled by attention to the current Swiss policy barring the construction of minarets. Oppression by a dominant value system––be it concrete or abstract––is a shared reality.

In the photographs reproduced in the work Studio views with White Negress and others, informed viewers will recognize iconic works by Modernist master Constantin Brancusi. Occupying the foreground in each photograph is Brancusi’s White Negress. Already evoked in the title of that work, the stereotypical Africanoid features borne by the small bust apparently submit to a confusing re-racialization following the fact that the work has been carved in white marble. (In bronze, the work goes by the title Blond Negress.) What is more, Brancusi’s works are here depicted in their original studio setting, from which they today seem fully disassociated, given the works’ rigid, iconic stature. Also, the two photographic reproductions differ slightly, since the works were slightly rearranged, then re-photographed. Following Rowland’s self-reflexive presentation of the book in which he found these photographs––in his photograph, the book is held up and open by two hands; it was then printed silkscreen on paper, creased along the spine of the depicted book, framed, raised on a shelf, and set leaning against the wall––he emphasizes the concept of representation. For, in the case of White Negress, buried beneath layers of reproductions and representations, there is the reality of an individual with Africanoid features as well as the history of influence and abstraction that brought the reality of art production in Africa to rest in high Modernism’s discourse on pure form.

Informing and simultaneously motivating Rowland’s production of formal abstraction––as is best embodied in the work Crayon Study 1––are the somehow invisible lines of influence, which may allow artistic production to ignore reality, as well as a dialogue on visual literacy. In that the forms of Crayon Study 1 have been abstracted from (or, from another perspective, aspire to imitate) the letterforms and syntactical structures of writing, they insist on their illegibility. Illegibility, as such, is a reality that we must face in art as well as in culture at large, since some do not have the specialized knowledge of others, and since in our society there are those who are structurally disadvantaged, sometimes even unable to read.

Complementing the primary forms that Rowland exhibited in the installation at deuxpiece were additional elements that were nevertheless of equal significance and value as discrete artworks. Such was the case with the artwork that took the form of a publication, which gave form and primacy to the dialogic relationship between those works which became physical and the many variations that did not––to paraphrase Sol LeWitt. Both and Other Types contains its own visual language and describes a period of time and activity that came before the installation of the exhibition, but which is indistinct. Serving as the mechanism by which to store as well as display and distribute the books, Non-Structural Column 1 functioned in its own way as a sculpture and as an architectural intervention; the structure gave the illusion of being a structural column, since its two planes form a logical geometry and from certain points in the room it appeared to reach all the way from the floor to the ceiling.

Taking a related approach but maintaining a slightly different aim, Other works, a digital print which had been mounted on stretchers actually reaching from the floor to the ceiling, depicted another space filled with objects. Although the space clearly differed in form and scale from that of the exhibition space, it supported the partial impression of a continuous space. Not only did the work manifest specters of alternate works installed in an alternate space, it did so specifically by means of depicting (and thus revealing) the studio, where the photo was taken, as a site of production and presentation. Choosing not to privilege this space, but rather to invite a comparison between it and the exhibition space, Rowland therefore emphasized the nature of each space and each object therein contained as an experiment, as a choice made and a choice potentially made differently.

This brings us, finally, to Relic, a work that hinges on its ability to evoke relations to other objects, spaces, and times, while also maintaining a degree of autonomy. At the same time that the work serves Spiritual 1 by giving form to its material and performative history, Relic is a disembodied body; it represents the present absence that is the crux of much of Rowland’s project. Read in dialogue with painting, the mass of hanging fabric reveals the very matter out of which representations are constructed. More than that, it is the shadow cast by both the activity of production as well as the individual who produces. This dependent but simultaneously independent, singular form, like much of the work in the exhibition, makes a claim on behalf of an Other, a position in society and in tradition, through its relation to diversified artistic production as well as through its constituency among an ensemble of artistic products present in the space of the exhibition.

––John Beeson

The website of the project space, deuxpiece: http://deuxpiece.com/

The website of the artist, Cameron Rowland: http://cameronrowland.com/

Artforum, December 2011: Mario Pfeifer at KOW

"Mario Pfeifer at KOW, Berlin" in Artforum International Magazine (December 2011).


For more information, visit: http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201110
The artist's website: http://www.mariopfeifer.com/
The gallery's website: http://www.kow-berlin.info/exhibitions/solo_exhibition_5

CAMERON ROWLAND _BOTH TOGETHER_ WITH JOHN BEESON: Installation Views

CAMERON ROWLAND BOTH TOGETHER WITH JOHN BEESON
deuxpiece, Basel, CH

Spiritual 1 (left) and Relic (right)

Relic

Relic (left) and Other works (right)

Studio view with White Negress and others (left), Crayon Study 1 (center), and Non-Structural Column 1 (right)

Non-Structural Column 1 (detail) with BOTH AND OTHER TYPES

For more information:
The website of the project space, deuxpiece: http://deuxpiece.com/
The website of the artist, Cameron Rowland: http://cameronrowland.com/

artforum.com Critic's Pick: Timur Si-Qin at Société

"Timur Si-Qin at Société, Berlin" in Critic's Picks on artforum.com (November 29, 2011).


To read the review, visit: http://artforum.com/archive/id=29643
The artist's website: http://timursiqin.com/
The gallery's website: http://societeberlin.com/

Artforum, November 2011: Fred Lonidier at Silberkuppe

"Fred Lonidier at Silberkuppe, Berlin" in Artforum International Magazine (November 2011).


For more information, visit: http://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=201109
The gallery's website: http://www.silberkuppe.org/

Spike, Fall 2011: Dan Perjovschi at Galerija Gregor Podnar and Seduction

"Dan Perjovschi at Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin" and "Seduction: Sperrmüll" in spike Art Quarterly (Issue 29 - Fall 2011). 


For more information, visit: http://spikeart.at/index.php?option=com_magazine&func=show_article&id=134&lang=en
The gallery's website: http://www.gregorpodnar.com/_index.php?p=p_211&sName=dan-perjovschi-%B7-september-%B7-berlin-gallery