Transcending

Tony Matelli (us), Andreas Blank (de), Gavin Turk (uk), Toby Christian (uk), Jiri Geller (fin)

Group show from 30/10/2010 to the 18/12/2010
Opening reception Friday 29. October 2010 from 5 – 8 pm

See the works from the show

PRESS RELEASE:

The exhibition Transcending is a group show, that examines the theme hyperrealism.

The term hyperrealism is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has developed since the beginning of this century, even though artists, such as Chuck Close, Duane Hanson and Denis Peterson have been working with the hyper-realistic style since the 1960s.

The exhibition brings together five artists using hyperrealism in their sculptural works of art. The practice of hyper-realistic art, when concerning painting, is connected to photorealism, a style where paintings simulate photographs. The hyper-realistic works create a false sense of reality which is even more apparent when concerning sculptural objects.
The sculptures transcend their own materiality in their simulation of reality. A convincing illusion is created with tightness and precise skill, presenting the works of art as living tangible objects due to a focus on every little detail of the constructed object. The viewer is reminded of his or her own presence in front of the works and furthermore the themes often refer to political or social issues, which display the viewer’s habits in society.

When looking at the Transcending exhibition, one sees the artists’ different errands:

There is a clear duality in Tony Matelli’s works of art. On one side the sculpture Yesterday, cast in bronze and plastic, has a connection way back in art history to the roman bronze sculptures, and the material itself refers to something solid and everlasting. It so to speak freezes his sculpture in time and has an existential meaning. On the other hand though, Matelli refers to our own lives with objects that are familiar to us all in his use of everyday objects such as beer cans and card stacks that signal the time passing by. Even further they represent consumer society and mass production, a theme well used over the last fifty years.

Jiri Geller’s work continue?, states a society- and consumer critique even more explicitly. A bronze game console alights, because of a gas burner device, when the viewer comes close to the work. The viewer is again deceived by the materials’ design and the extreme precision of the hyperrealists.

Gavin Turk, one of the YBA’s of the 1990s, is clearly socially- and politically engaged, which becomes evident in his work Inheritance, that is a part of a series, where Turk collected belongings from homeless people in London. He reproduced their private items and casted them in bronze and thereby indirectly displays problems within society.