The narrative of abstraction in western painting is one of linear progression. We are taught that abstraction unfolded neatly: from Braque’s pixelated landscapes via Kandinsky’s colour explosions to Mondrian’s grids, we arrived at abstraction proper. But if total abstraction was achieved with Malevich’s Black Square in 1915, how then does painting continue along this linear trajectory more than 100 years later? For two Berlin-based contemporary artists Bernard Frize and Imi Knoebel, the answer lies in subverting progress itself. Detours brings together works by these artists to present an argument for divergent timelines.
Berlin-based French painter Bernard Frize paints in an unambiguous linear sequence but surrenders action to his materials. Although still working with the traditional materials of brush and canvas, Frize aims to create a ‘small mechanism, an engine that runs by itself’ in order to explore the variations possible within the formal properties of colour and line. In this algorithmic mode, colours are allowed their own agency to bleed into each other, eschewing the painter’s authorial voice. For the 2015 series that included Suret, Frize mixed resin with thin acrylics before applying them simultaneously across the canvas. The resulting painting is paradoxical, both organic and synthetic.
Progression also drives the desire to produce something novel. In an interview with Imi Knoebel, the German artist recalls grappling with the stultifying pressure of the ‘Fetish of the New’. As a young artist at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Knoebel felt as if everything had been done before. “What’s left?” he asked. “If you want to do something, to stay alive, you have to think of something at least as radical.” He discovered that looking back to Malevich allowed him to navigate new avenues into the future, and in doing so carved out a distinctive mode of hybrid sculpture-painting. In the series Faces, different coloured strips of acrylic film are woven into grids. These both interfere with the medium-support relationship and investigate the possible variations available within a limited set of rules. As the viewer, we can’t help but recognise ourselves in this work; like the human face, each 75mm grid in Faces has the same basic structure – eyes, nose, mouth – but each is infinitely unique.
Opening Hours
- The gallery is temporarily closed, but the art is still there.
- Please address all enquiries to info@gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz
Kitchener Street Back Gallery
- Corner Kitchener and Wellesley Streets
- Auckland, 1010
The narrative of abstraction in western painting is one of linear progression. We are taught that abstraction unfolded neatly: from Braque’s pixelated landscapes via Kandinsky’s colour explosions to Mondrian’s grids, we arrived at abstraction proper. But if total abstraction was achieved with Malevich’s Black Square in 1915, how then does painting continue along this linear trajectory more than 100 years later? For two Berlin-based contemporary artists Bernard Frize and Imi Knoebel, the answer lies in subverting progress itself. Detours brings together works by these artists to present an argument for divergent timelines.
Berlin-based French painter Bernard Frize paints in an unambiguous linear sequence but surrenders action to his materials. Although still working with the traditional materials of brush and canvas, Frize aims to create a ‘small mechanism, an engine that runs by itself’ in order to explore the variations possible within the formal properties of colour and line. In this algorithmic mode, colours are allowed their own agency to bleed into each other, eschewing the painter’s authorial voice. For the 2015 series that included Suret, Frize mixed resin with thin acrylics before applying them simultaneously across the canvas. The resulting painting is paradoxical, both organic and synthetic.
Progression also drives the desire to produce something novel. In an interview with Imi Knoebel, the German artist recalls grappling with the stultifying pressure of the ‘Fetish of the New’. As a young artist at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Knoebel felt as if everything had been done before. “What’s left?” he asked. “If you want to do something, to stay alive, you have to think of something at least as radical.” He discovered that looking back to Malevich allowed him to navigate new avenues into the future, and in doing so carved out a distinctive mode of hybrid sculpture-painting. In the series Faces, different coloured strips of acrylic film are woven into grids. These both interfere with the medium-support relationship and investigate the possible variations available within a limited set of rules. As the viewer, we can’t help but recognise ourselves in this work; like the human face, each 75mm grid in Faces has the same basic structure – eyes, nose, mouth – but each is infinitely unique.
