Monthly Archives: March 2014

Mark Nelson – This being: That becomes

Posted on by

Mark Nelson – This being: That becomes

05 May 2014 – 25 May 2014

The works of British photo artist, Mark Nelson, reflect magical moments of clarity and completeness. As he describes his state of mind while photographing: “These images come from a place inside…”.

The created imagery is like frames from an imaginary movie with a sense to something, which is about to happen, or has just happened. Like photographs of a wanderer across the favourite cities of the world they show sceneries of various places such as Venice, Paris, Berlin, Brighton as well as New York, New Jersey and San Gimignano.

Being a Buddhist, Nelson links the perspective to the idea of true self, a rich well of natural creativity and vibrancy. In Nelson’s show, This being: That becomes, the thread of similarities of his images over a long period of time seems to point toward a common source, of ‘water drawn from the same well’. In addition to his presented works from the last 30 years sound textures, meant to be a soundtrack to the show, will be an obvious catalyst for visitors as it was for the artist, helping to recreate the dreamlike landscape of the inner self.

Impressed by Abstract Expressionist movement in art, invented in the late 1940s in New York, Mark Nelson has been drawn toward shapes and signs. Revealed as a reaction against the horrors of the Second World War, the process of making art was considered to be more important than the final object. In the photographs of Nelson you often find triangles and arrows pointing to other parts of the image, in a sense of leading us to another place, to a point of reference in the image. Whether his black and white or his colour works his imagery has certain painterly qualities, showing a moment in an eternal buzz of change.

Mark Nelson began his photographic career in London in 1980, as a professional printer to some of the UK’s top photographers. His professional darkroom became ‘First Light Studios’ which is now based in Brighton UK. From 1985, after observing the potential of the photographic printing medium as an art form, he began to discover his own ability to create photographic works in his own style, and continues to do so. He has exhibited worldwide and his works are held in many private collections in the UK, France and the USA. He has worked for ECM records, American Express and was the first photographer to have exhibitions on 300 British Airways aeroplanes simultaneously.

With kind support by Nielsen Bainbridge Group. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, 60 pages, 2014.

More information about Mark Nelson

Share on Facebook+1Share on TwitterShare via email Share

Deenesh Ghyczy Greg Murr – Spectral

Posted on by

DEENESH GHYCZY and GREG MURR – SPECTRAL

01 April 2014 – 15 April 2014

Opening: 04 April 2014, 7 – 9 PM

WHITECONCEPTS presents an exhibition of paintings about our reliance on vision as a means of understanding ourselves and our environment. Spectral, a two-person exhibition of paintings features the works of Deenesh Ghyczy (HU-GER) and Greg Murr (USA). In this show, both artists employ visual aberrations that address the limits of our perceptual capacities and draw connections between everyday phenomena and the unobservable frameworks that govern reality.

Sight is for most the dominant faculty among our five senses. Without vision, navigating quotidian life would require a notably altered approach.Yet for all our reliance upon it, our eyes are nevertheless a finite tool that manufactures a very particular experience of reality via a spectrum of light waves. What happens, then, when we probe vision’s boundaries to explore the distortions and threshold of this perceptual apparatus? And how can we engage our awareness of optical mechanics to explore comparatively intangible contexts such as the interior wonders of the human psyche or, outwardly, the physical laws of nature?

Deenesh Ghyczy uses traditional media to make paintings that would at first glance seem rooted in contemporary technology, given their multi-faceted and sometimes surreal appearance. Figurative subjects, attentively rendered in oil on linen, are fractured into multiple fragments that induce a sense of double- or triple-vision. What some might suspect a digitally based device is actually the diffraction of his subject through a simple prism. At once familiar, disorienting, and at moments haunting, Ghyczy’s rather conventional portraits are turned on their head, as it were, so that we can once more see the components that comprise a face without ever concisely establishing one’s identity. Like hearing a foreign language we can only hope to understand through its phonetic attributes, we’re challenged to look at Ghyczy’s images through the eyes of a child that studies the elements of line, shape, value and hue for the first time, not quite making sense of the whole.

The absence of the whole may initially be the most evident thread of continuity bridging these two artists. Through intentionally disarming studies of one particular peony blossom as viewed from multiple perspectives, Greg Murr similarly probes notions of incompleteness versus manifestation. Vacant holes of canvas replace portions of an otherwise highly rendered floral bloom. White spaces act as place-markers for something once present—now a specter of what had been. And the blossom itself, reiterated in four or five adjacent variations, makes a discrete reference to the cosmological phenomenon of gravitational lensing, (largely attributed to Einstein and his general theory of relativity), where the light of a distant galaxy is distorted and multiplied by the ‘lens’ of intense gravitational forces that stand between it and the observer. Whether with regard to the geometry of the universe, however, or the more earthly notion of the biological life-cycle itself, these meticulously painted perennials captivate with their intrinsic structure, rhythm and animus. Both artists encourage us to reflect upon the act of seeing, indulging us with visual harmony and a taste of the familiar, without fulfilling our expectations or offering full resolution.

Information about Deenesh Ghyczy
www.dghyczy.com

Information about Greg Murr
www.gregmurr.com

Share on Facebook+1Share on TwitterShare via email Share

CUMULUS BERLIN, 2010

Posted on by

cumulus berlin, 2010

A percent for art project by Thorsten Goldberg for the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in Berlin

The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in Berlin, located in the Wilhelmstrasse since 2000, received a new building in 2010. This included a war-related vacant lot and formed a courtyard after a long time.

For the new building and the courtyard garden a percent for art competition was held, in which 14 artists on invitation were involved. Beside Thorsten Golberg, awards were also given to Arnold Dreyblatt, Frank Stuermer, Claudia Faehrenkemper, Thomas Wrede and Werner Hutmacher.

Goldberg’s award-winning project contribution was the only work that dealt with the outdoor courtyard garden. The artwork was inaugurated on the 20th August 2010.

Cumulus is a stylized, rotating cumulus cloud that is placed on a swivel pole with bracket in the courtyard garden of the Ministry. The cloud is made of high-gloss glass-fiber reinforced plastic and is rotatably mounted on the top of a tall, swivel, polished chrome angle. Shifting wind directions cause a change in the position of the cloud in the air space of the garden. Through a hand grip the entire arm with the cloud can be swung also by hand. At a height of about 11 meters above the ground level, the object with approximately 3,5 x 2,5 x 2,5 m appears relatively small and thus refers to the model character of the courtyard display gardens of the Ministry. As the only actor in the sky over the courtyard garden, the cloud is at its prominent location still widely effective: on the 6 m jib swings the cloud by about 200° around the edge of the building. The reflectivity of the mast recaptures with the rotation the surrounding architecture and the landscape.

More information about the artist
More projects by Thorsten Goldberg
www.goldberg-berlin.de

Share on Facebook+1Share on TwitterShare via email Share

60°N 05°E (ENCASED WATERSIDE), 2009–2012

Posted on by

60°N 05°E (encased waterside), 2009–2012

A work of art in public space by Thorsten Goldberg for the city Bergen/NO

The city railway Bergen (Norwegian Bybanen i Bergen) is a rail-based urban transport in the Norwegian city Bergen. Supported by KORO (Public Art Norway), it has its own artistic program that promotes art projects in public space. 

To artistically enhance a meeting point for people of different backgrounds, in 2009 a competition for an public artwork was announced, at which over 100 artists participated.

Thorsten Goldberg`s percent for art project, awarded by a jury, was officially opened on the 15th of June 2012.

A rectangular, 416 m2 large, reflected polished stainless steel surface covers the rocky shore area of an inner city fjord together with a small island. It is aligned exactly with the coordinate system of the Earth and describes the area between 60°22’52.55″N / 60°22’51.8″N and 05°20’01.24″E / 05°20’02.32″E.

60°N 05°E (encased waterside) is a post- and reshaping of the landscape at the same time. Due to the pulse of light which illuminates the perforation of individual triangles, the technoid surface is overlaid with a soft wave motion and places the crystallin structure seemingly in motion: a silvery, on the landscape lying cloth that seems to float because of the slowly rising and falling light. The work combines different realities: on the one hand the large area reflects the sky and the surrounding area, capturing them on the surface. On the other hand, the original shore area of the fjord is removed from the eye of the observer.

more information about the artist
more projects by Thorsten Goldberg
www.goldberg-berlin.de

Share on Facebook+1Share on TwitterShare via email Share

AND HONEY UPON HAWTHORN GROWS, 2013

Posted on by

and honey upon hawthorn grows, 2013

An art project in public space by Thorsten Goldberg for the City of Danzig (Gdańsk)

The South Baltic project called „Wind energy in the BSR 2″ (short: WEBSR2) is a consortium of experts from several countries (Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany) with the aim to promote and advance the expansion of wind energy in the partner countries. 

In order to anchor the wind energy in public consciousness specifically in these three cities of Kalmar, Rostock and Gdańsk, Thorsten Goldberg was commissioned with a work of art in public space. 

On the 13th of June 2013 the art work „AND HONEY UPON HAWTHORN GROWS“, located close to the sea, in the Ronald Reagan Park in Gdańsk, was presened to the public. 

Similar to a lantern above curved mast rises from the ground. Like the leaves of a plant solar cells are raising towards the sun and a five-bladed rotor turns to the wind. With the gained energy the lamp, which is placed at the highest point in the calyx-like funnel, is being operated. 

Letters wander upwards the stalk and form the Polish title of the work „I MIÓD NA GŁOGU ROŚNIE“, in English „AND HONEY UPON HAWTHORN GROWS“. That is a part of a sentence from the english Cockaigne story, announcing a promise of an country, in which there is no more energy needed – a perhaps soon realized utopia. 

more information about the artist
more projects by Thorsten Goldberg
www.goldberg-berlin.de

Share on Facebook+1Share on TwitterShare via email Share