Exhibition: La Ligne f(x)=ax+b
Balzer Projects, Basel, Switerland
Jan.17, 2015 - March 07, 2015
Balzer Projects, Basel, Switerland
Jan.17, 2015 - March 07, 2015
A line in itself is the most basic form. A point multiplied infinite times, stretching towards another imaginary point, creating a whole. Separating itself from other matter, it creates a divide, a border, two halves. Yet estranging itself from one section to another, it indulges and combines itself with the other half, creating something new, two wholes.A line, as simplistic as it seems, develops its complexity through associations. It divides and encompasses, it is a hypocritical concept, versatile and unique.
balzer art projects is pleased to present recent works and projects by four young, international artists, Pius Fox, Alice Gaskon, Lawrence Power and Stefan Vogel. They all work in different media (installation/sound and video), assemblage, poetry and painting) and treat the line in different, often opposing ways. What they have in common is the acknowledgement of the line as the basic and defining element in art making. Furthermore, it becomes clear through their work, that the line as abstract concept presents two sides to a whole.
Gaskon’s work sets the defining tone to the space as she divides the gallery into two halves; they are filled with loosely curated installations of all four artists. Her work is minimalist at first glance, but precision and rigor are always somehow broken in each work. Pius Fox’s rather small pieces are abstract and strictly divided, strongly reminiscent of what Clement Greenberg coined post-painterly abstraction (1964), but the application and layers of paint are atmospheric and almost esoteric. Both artists share a reference to architecture and. Lawrence Power stands in the traditions of fellow Montréalite Philip Guston, an abstract expressionist who brought representational and objective painting back after 1945. His brush strokes are thick, but precise, he often uses collage but his artistic language remains reduced. Stefan Vogel’s work is characterized by an openness to exploring different media to get across the messages he wants to convey. His combines poetic language, organic and recycled matter with traditional art materials. Power and Vogel share a seriousness towards their medium, but also a lightheartedness and sense of humor.
A conceptual similarity can be found in all, however separated again and again by sharp analytical sections and juxtapositions on and of different visual and conceptual levels. Vogel makes them visible in order to open spaces for reflection on the question of what humanity actually is or can be. Likewise, Fox’s, Power’s and Gaskon’s playful architectural designs conquer the physical space of possible new orders. Both artists question what is and what systems are, and, most importantly, the question of what those systems and orders which are not yet in existence, might become. The “not-yet-consciousness” which can be read in all artists’ work makes visible what is not there in the real world, but present in the entanglement of subconscious realities - because we already are, what we are not. All four artists juggle with the paradigms of present tense, opening up to the gaze of the audience a simultaneity of levitated conditions. Everything seems possible from here.
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View from the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
View of the exhibition La Ligne f(x)=ax+b, Balzer Projects, Basel, Switzerland, 2015
