Peter Piller at Projecte SD

Since the late 1990’s, Peter Piller (Fritzlar, Germany, 1968) has been dealing with one of the most defining traits of the so-called information-era: the impulse towards the creation and development of archives. The information-era is, of course, the most recent and extreme state of the quite ancient phenomena of collecting, organizing and storing data. History (as a practice, as well as as a narrative) is – in a sense, at least – a very direct consequence of this impulse. And History, with its need for sound proofs and indeniable references, got ever more interesting since photography came about. For the last two centuries, not only historical reporting but pretty much the whole of comunication has been resting on a highly specialized game of making a collective sense of visual materials that, when freed from any sort of caption, say precisely nothing, but are in themselves all so very telling. This fluctuating, artificious capacity of the visual record to act as the anchor of meaning has been the focus of Peter Piller’s artistic practice. His on-growing archive, bearing several thousand found pictures distributed by more than 100 categories, has served as his primary tool for a critical (and often humored) analisis of the shifting ideological ability of images, of the overruling power of the category, and, ultimately, of the frailty of the visual structure of meaning and its multiple subliminal endeavours.

Assembled around the title Don’t Hate the Player. Hate the Game, the majority of the pieces shown in this exhibition belong to two different categories from the Peter Piller’s archive: Umschläge (2011-12) and Bereitschaftsgrad (2015). The first one is composed of twenty pieces showing found front and back covers of as many editions of an East German military magazine titled Armeerundschau. Published between 1956 and 1990, Armeerundschau was the National People’s Army medium of choice to inspire and prepare young men for their military service. Cleared of all text but maintaining every element of graphic design originally used in the magazine, these full-color couplings of girls and guns are presented here alongside – and, for the first time, interspersed with – black-and-white counterparts, also found as spreads in the inside pages of the same magazine (Bereitschaftsgrad), as well as single-image, large-scale pieces that, by way of their less explicit or direct nature, throw a puzzling level of ambiguity into the mix (Blicke).

The importance of the serial component of Peter Piller’s production does not pass unoticed in this exhibition. In fact, repetition and variation are once again key factors in the experience of this artist’s works. If repetition functions here as an anihilator of narrative – that is, as the  element that lets us know immediately that there is no story being told – variation is, on the other hand, the factor that allows us to concentrate on the slight differences these images carry with them – the minor details through which the ideological apparatus of a military prop magazine comes to show. It is therefore pretty understandable if one finds oneself moving on from the blatant display of power and violence contained in the soldiers’ images and the varying degrees of sexual innuendo of the girls’ pictures, into an even more disturbing realization of the inner workings of a carefully designed structre of meaning: one that correlates pleasure and pain, tenderness and violence, technology and flesh, sacrifice and reward, sexual drive and melancholy, equating and effacing everything under the spell of the perfect photographic composition.

Ayşe Erkmen, Ann Veronica Janssens at S.M.A.K.

In 2013, the City of Ghent invited Ayşe Erkmen (Istanbul, 1949) and Ann Veronica Janssens (Folkestone, 1956) each to design a permanent sculpture for the Korenmarkt in the centre of the city. From early in 2016 these two artworks will share this open space. S.M.A.K. is taking the opportunity to invite the makers and their work to the museum and, in the form of an exhibition, will examine where their oeuvres meet and intersect.

Ayşe Erkmen and Ann Veronica Janssens are sculptors of approximately the same generation. In both their cases, sculpture goes beyond the three-dimensional nature of the artwork and the spatial relationship between the work and the viewer. Their work is founded on a shared fascination for the hidden world of ordinary things. Both artists study this with considerable commitment and scientific precision, though each from a different angle. Ayşe Erkmen has built up an international reputation by means of situationist interventions, (mostly) in architectural spaces. Her projects result from incisive analysis of the immediate surroundings, with all the physical, practical, historical, cultural, political and philosophical significance they contain. Ann Veronica Janssens owes her reputation to the research she carries out into the peculiarities of human perception. Her sculptural interventions show the results of scientific experiments with no useful purpose that involve such intangible phenomena as light, colour and sound. Despite their intellectual starting point, Erkmen and Janssens never produce overly ponderous work. After all, they present reality, with a rebellious approach and perfect design, from an unexpected angle.

Ann Veronica Janssens and Ayşe Erkmen opted for a single exhibition as the location for their encounter, and created it in mutual consultation. Under the open, infinitely interpretable and somewhat absurd title A, they present new and existing sculptures, installations and interventions in a display that is akin to the relationship between the two sculptures on the Korenmarkt. For this purpose they have developed a series of individual rooms adjacent to each other and in which views from one room to another bring about dialogue between the two oeuvres. They have included documents, material samples, sketches and photos that were part of the creative process leading to the two sculptures for the Korenmarkt.

The artists give the museum an important role, both as architecture and as an institution. By means of simple sculptural interventions in the existing rooms, they achieve a substantial impact with far-reaching implications. They leave the discovery of possible interpretations and ways of experiencing them to the public. The works of Erkmen and Janssens balance between object and event. They are performative, are experienced personally by every visitor and are consequently variable. When the artists set up a physical or mental barrier in front of the viewer they have one important aim in mind: to break down routine thought or behaviour and make the invisible visible, thus making possible a new view of reality.

The artists also incorporate part of the museum’s current programme into the context of their exhibition. They are integrating Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing No. 36 into their collective project, a work from the S.M.A.K. collection that the museum is showing for almost a year. As part of the changing presentations that have accompanied this wall drawing for the past few months, Erkmen and Janssens make new links with LeWitt’s oeuvre on the basis of several works they have selected from the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book published in association with MER. Paper Kunsthalle, with articles by Guillaume Désanges, Philippe Van Cauteren and Jan Verwoert.

Elizabeth Kley at Canada (New York)

For Ms. Kley's first solo show with the gallery, she will include works on paper, a wall painting, and ceramic pieces that refer to Weiner Werkstatte, Studio Craft and the history of excessive decoration.

 Kley takes her title from the famous Shelley poem of the same name about a ruined monument to a long forgotten despot. The poem is set in an unnamed strange locale and its themes include hubris and the inevitable decline of empire. It may seem apt, given the current political climate, to consider history as a series of blustery strongmen who naturally fall into the abyss of time.  Kley, on the other hand, offers joy instead of pontification. Here we have unabashedly extravagant designs both mysterious and inviting, weightless manifestations of the past.

 Kley’s current black and white ceramic vessels and drawings are inspired by Islamic, Byzantine and Asian historical ornaments and can be described as somewhere between all-over paintings and decorative sculptures. Repeated bold calligraphic patterns are filled with life-giving symbols and designs including flower petals and leafy tendrils.

The vessels are made from hand rolled scraped coils and fired in a large electric kiln in her studio.  Decorations are applied using homemade underglazes containing oxides and stains, with wax resist and sgraffito. The artworks are not only beautiful to look at but are also made with an artisan’s care and ingenuity. When colors appear, they are as deep and yummy as a brand new box of crayons. Dripping glazes reveal an appealing unfussy temperament, and forms sometimes seem to imply bulbous fruits like pomegranates or flowers. Although she sometimes renders traditional motifs directly, Kley’s works are rarely strict copies. Instead, they are personal inquiries into visually pleasurable shapes, colors and patterns. Each piece is unique, but also seems to be part of a larger whole. 

Elisabeth Kley lives in Manhattan and works in Brooklyn. Solo and two person exhibitions include translucent threads of dawn at Regina Rex (with Conrad Ventur); A Sign of Eternal Beauty at GAVLAK Palm Beach (with Florence Derive); Large Red Lotus Sun with Yellow Face at 39 Great Jones, The Queen's Feathers at John Tevis Gallery, Paris; Peacocks and Bottles at the Georgian National Gallery in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia; and Momenta Art. Kley's work was recently included in Jack Pierson's Tomorrow's Man 2. 

Elisabeth Kley’s exhibition marks the gallery’s expansion into a second exhibition space at 331 Broome St.  For more information please visit www.canadanewyork.com

Nathaniel Robinson

Discrete Pieces, Launch F18 (New York).  December 12 - January 31, 2016

Robinson is known for creating thoughtfully fabricated theoretical environments, transforming and engaging the gallery space. His recent solo exhibitions presented themselves as installation, but with an ambiguity as to whether the objects were dependent on their surroundings or could exist autonomously. Discrete Pieces focuses on stand-alone sculptural works, such as a stylized mailbox carefully crafted in powder blue and a container ship made into a sleek horizontal sculpture, though the artist continues to question if the works are or ever could be entirely isolated objects. Several of the works are based on dividing structures - walls and fences - which attempt to separate one part of the world from another. Within this exhibition Robinson finds that his questions on existence relate to the possibility or impossibility of segmenting reality and drawing distinctions.

Nathaniel Robinson (born 1980) received his BA from Amherst College, MA in 2002 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL in 2005. He has had solo exhibitions with Feature, Inc., New York, NY, Devening Projects + Editions and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.  Robinson has also been included in group exhibitions at On Stellar Rays, 33 Orchard and White Columns in New York, as well as in Brussels, Leipzig, Dusseldorf and Melbourne. Most recently he was included in Chrome Green at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, The Now Forever at the Basilica Hudson, NY and LAUNCH F18’s Project Space in early 2015. Robinson lives and works in Brewster, NY.

Political Populism at Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier