CHOOSING

28th November 2008 - 17th January 2009


curated by Robert Barry
 
 
     
     

Exhibition views Galerie Sfeir-Semler

 




Choice. Choosing. To choose. What is more basic?

Choosing which artists to include in the exhibition, then asking the artists to choose two works themselves to put in the exhibit, for whatever reasons. I chose mature artists who have been around a while. Friends, whose work I’ve known for years. Each one with a strong individual style, whose work requires close examination. Artists whose work should be given more opportunity to be seen more often. I chose not to include young emerging artists, paintings, or any of my work. The artists were asked to give a reason why they chose those two works. If they chose to.
I guess I chose these artists because I just wanted to see more of their work in a proper exhibition space.
Robert Barry, November 2008
 
William Anastasi
Dove Bradshaw
Peter Downsbrough
Tadaaki Kuwayama
Maurizio Nannucci
Richard Nonas
Christopher Williams

 

 

 
William Anastasi
(born in 1933, lives in New York)
 

Reason for pairing: wall/floor: floor/wall.
 
   
"Without Title", 1965/2008
   "Without Title", 1965/2008  

   
  "Pocket Drawing", 2007   "Subway Drawing (V. Dwan)", 1968




Dove Bradshaw
(born in 1949, lives in New York)
 
I paired these two because of their common use of geometry, and their pairing of two elements. Also my statement why I made that pairing is as follows: on wall / in wall.
 
   
"Zero Space, Zero Time, Infinite Heat", 1988/2008   "Oracle", 2006/2008  

 

 

 
Peter Downsbrough
(born in 1940, lives in Brussels)
 

HIER
AS
Two wall pieces
The one a variation, HIER, on a theme with a pipe and letters
The other - the spaces between - from to and the balance
 
   
"AS", 2008   "HIER", 2008

 

 
Tadaaki Kuwayama
(born in 1932, lives in New York)
 
I selected two groups of work to show my interest in materials and also to demonstrate my idea that my work is not an individual piece but repetition of units to create a space of infinity.
 
   
"TK68-03", 2003   "TK68-03", 2003
   
"TK131-1/2-06", 2006   "TK131-1/2-06", 2006

 



Maurizio Nannucci
(born in 1939, lives in Florence, Italy)
 
Both works are forming a kind of open parenthesis embracing my art practice to explore the visual/physical vocabulary of linguistic signs and the multiple meanings
of language and to evoke simultaneously all senses: to see, to hear, to feel - seeing, hearing, feeling - and speaking in terms of asking questions, this means involvement
of the viewer. Whether he/she agrees to participate in the process of transforming visual perceptions in consciousness is unforeseen, as well as the completion of the art piece.
 
 
 
"Listen to your eyes", 1994   Untitled, 1965      

 


Richard Nonas
(born in 1939, lives in Florence, Italy)
 
Both (older and newer) are 'fist' sculptures - concentrated objects waiting for what always comes next. They are my tools for that job.
 
     
"Steel", 2007   "Cut wood-block", 1989      
     
"Oil paint on wood", 2007   "Oil paint on saw-cut wood", 2006/2008   "Oil paint on wood", 2005

 



Christopher Williams
(born in 1956, lives in Los Angeles)

 
From 1979 to the present I have produced a number of works attempting to rethink the genre of portraiture. What all these works have in common is a social or cultural representation of the subject represented, not an expression of the sitter’s subjectivity. My first selection, Brasil, is a work from 1989, which functioned as a footnote to a much larger work of the same year, Angola to Vietnam*. It is a collage, an unmodified cover of the August 1988 issue of Elle magazine feature seven models in sailor caps, each bearing the name of a different country: China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, and the USA. It is also a group portrait, at the time I saw it as a kind of musical comedy working with different notions of beauty, international relations, a high-seas fantasy of an all-female international navy. My next selection Mustafa Kinte (Gambia); Camera: Makina 67 506347; Plaubel Feinmechanik und Optik GmbH; Borsigallee 37; 60388 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Shirt: van Laack Shirt Kent 64; 41061 Mönchengladbach, Germany; Dirk Sharper Studio, Berlin, July 20th, 2007 (2008), is from my most recent body of work. It, too, is a period piece — an image that is a type of collage without scissors. It is constructed using three basic elements: the sitter, Mustafa Kinte; the camera, Plaubel Makina 67, a rare and very sought-after medium format camera; and a shirt, manufactured by the well-known company, van Laack, which employed Marcel Broodthaers as a model for an advertisement in "Der Spiegel" in 1971. ("Natürlich bekommen Sie für den Preis eines van Laack Hemdes zwei andere"). This photograph is a play of late 60s/early 70s post-colonial images of empowerment produced by the Left (think Jean Rouch or Jean-Luc Godard/Jean-Pierre Gorin in Mozambique), which represent a marginalized subject after being given the means of self-representation (the camera), in order to produce an authentic local culture (another type of fantasy).

 
"Angola to Vietnam*", Brasil, Front Cover, Elle, 15 Aout 1988, 1989   "Mustafa Kinte (Gambia), 2007 (2008)"