Giuseppe Penone's work is full of surprises, rarely what it appears to be at first sight. The three pieces currently on display at Marian Goodman are no exception, when they embrace the element of deception that comes hand in hand with Penone's preoccupation with the fusion of the animal and the vegetal, the human and the mineral.

On the gallery's upper floor, a sculpture, "La Geometria nelle mani/The Geometry in the hands," (2007) is accompanied by three large hung canvases: "Pelle di gafite/The skin of graphite," (2003/2006). Each canvas is subtitled with the name of a mineral: Rodonite, Purpurite and Uraninite.  From a distance, the three canvases appear three dimensional - engaging in the tactility so familiar to other of Penone's works. The palpable patterns made in graphite on black canvas seem to trace the lines of a human hand, apparently executed through projection of an enlarged image onto the canvas. We are appropriately convinced of the correspondence between the skin of the human hand and the traces of natural forms. But as we move closer, the canvases dissolve into two dimensional abstractions as they reveal themselves as nothing but graphite marks on a black ground.

In the downstairs gallery, Lo spazio della scultura (Pelle di cedro)/The space of the sculpture, (Skin of cedar)," (2001), seen in Paris at the 2004 exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, appears as a blanket of bark strips that covering the floor. At least this is how they appear as we go down the stairs. On inspection, however, we realize they are bronze, not bark, cast from the negative imprint of the "skin of the tree." Thus, the works achieve a visual semblance between the unlikely materials: bark and bronze. And then, as we sit with them, these bronze plates take on the appearance of the skin of dead creatures laid out to dry. There is one bronze plate in the middle of the others, perched on the branches of a (dead) tree, then covered in leather, fully convincing us that a hunter has been through these parts and left the traces of death in his wake. As they oscillate between dead trees, animal skins, fossil like remnants of a moment past, these bronze plates are melancholic, with absolutely no hope of a future revival.

The continuing appeal of Penone's work with natural materials to evoke the interface and, often the fusion, of the human and the natural world comes in their recourse to traditional sculpture. The otherwise exploratory works are meticulously crafted using traditional materials - bronze, canvas, paint, even trees and stone have been used for centuries - to engage with the eternal concern of the human place within the natural world.

- Frances Guerin

(Images top-bottom:  Guiseppe Penone.  Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris)

Top image:  La geometria nella mani/(The geometry in the hands), 2007, Bronze & polished stainless steel.

Middle image:  L-Pella di grafite (reflesso di rodonite)/(The skin of graphite (reflexion of rodonite), 2003-2006, Graphite on balck paper;  Mid-Sculpture; R-Pella di grafite (reflesso di uraninitee)/(The skin of graphite (reflexion of uraninite), 2003-2006, Graphite on canvas.

Bottom image:   Lo spazio della scultura (Pelle di cedro)  / The space of the sculpture (skin of cedar); (detail), 2001. Bronze & leather.

 

For the twenty-first century viewer, steeped in the ethics of representation and feminism, the first couple of rooms of the exhibition of recently discovered photographs by Czech photographer, Miroslav Tichy are unsettling. He explores the possibilities of "painting with a camera" all the time focussing on the female form. Over and over and over again, he obsessively photographs women at swimming pools, in the streets, in motion, stationary, supine, standing up, clothed, unclothed, in closeup and long shot. The obsession with which he photographs women's bodies, always from a distance, rarely with their consent, comes close to the perverse visions of a stalker. However, as we move through the exhibition, and familiarize ourselves with his photographs rescued from the dustbins of history, they take on a rare beauty.

The photographs were produced with Tichy's home-crafted cameras and makeshift processing techniques in the austerity of the censorship-ridden 1960s and 1970s Czechoslovaia. Harking back to early photographic experiments in photography of modernist photographs such as Edward Steichen - who also used the camera to capture the painterliness of the world - these deliberately distressed images also have a reverie to them that has disappeared from contemporary photography. They are anachronistic, not only for 2008 visitors to the Centre Pompidou, but also for their moment of production in the 1960s and 1970s.

The pamphlet accompanying the exhibition classifies the photographs as amateur. However, this category is more of a critical convenience than an accurate description of the blurred and blemished female bodies. Yes, like amateur images, they are exploring elements of the photographic medium: they display an extraordinary sense of composition, a sensitivity to the relationship between image and object, viewer and viewed, as well as the relations between light and dark and all the options in between. But, the obsessive focus on the female form speaks more articulately to the concerns of a professional photographer who, like photographers at the turn of the century, were interested in painting with the camera. The endless studies in light and darkness, movement and stasis, form and figure are as close as the camera will perhaps ever come to sketches of a studio model, particularly, those images in the second of the  six exhibition rooms; "figure/studies." Tichy's photographs are about form and the translation of that form into a two dimensional representation - a preoccupation once belonging to painting, and taken up by photography around the turn of the last century. Such concerns are not, traditionally speaking, the territory of the amateur.

Tichy presents us with a constant process of working and reworking, distressing, retouching and redefining the finished photograph. They are filled with mistakes, flaws, erosions and aleatory events on the surface of the image. However, unlike the amateur, Tichy's images are very consciously and meticulously worked on. If there are flaws in the presentation of the material, this is due to aging, unavailability of materials, the necessity of hiding them, mounting them on whatever material is available at the time. Whatever finds its way into Tichy's frame is no accident.

Ultimately, the more time we spend with these relics of a slowly dissolving past, the more beautiful and fascinating they become.

- Frances Guerin

(Images top-btottom: Miroslav Tichý, Untitled (announcement); @Foundation Tichy Ocean; Courtesy of Centre Pompidou); Miroslav Tichý Inv. Nr. 1-30, 15 x 18,5cm,  courtesy Foundation Tichy Ocean; Miroslav Tichý Inv. Nr. 1-37, 13 x 19cm,  courtesy Foundation Tichy Ocean; Miroslav Tichý (shown with camera), photo by Roman Buxbaum, © 1987, courtesy Foundation Tichy Ocean)

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

KW Institute of Contemporary Art

Berlin, Germany

Ricarda Roggan
Still Life

July 6 - September 7, 2008

Ricarda Roggan's motifs appear as if they were everyday situations encountered incidentally. The precision and concentration of her photographs tempt to conclude that all coincidence is staged and things occur only seemingly by chance. The artist cautiously penetrates real space, undertaking subtle interventions into existing constellations. Things and spaces were detached from their original context of meaning. School furniture, factory halls, cellars, tables, chairs, or loungers bear marks of past use, but in the new arrangements they forfeit their old function. The loss of their actual spatial context frees them from their functional duty. Bereft of its history, what is depicted eschews narrative.

The exhibition Still Life at KW Institute for Contemporary Art is the first institutional solo show of Ricarda Roggan (*1972, Dresden) in Germany.

FOr MORE INFORMATION ON RICARD ROGGAN:

http://www.eigen-art.com/Kuenstlerseiten/Ricarda_Roggan/Roggan_DE.html

http://deutsche-boerse.com/

(Images below:  Ricarda Roggan, from The Dignity of Objects, 2003 @Richarda Roggan)