Linus Bill + Adrien Horni @ Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam - Midlife Painting

Linus Bill + Adrien Horni 

Midlife Painting 

Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam 

May 11 – June 18, 2022 

Linus Bill + Adrien Horni’s Studio

Photo courtesy of Ellen de Bruijne Projects

There is always more than meets the eye in the work of the artist duo LINUS BILL + ADRIEN HORNI (both b. 1982, CH). What is seemingly a conventionally looking abstract painting bears extensive processes of transformation, revaluation, and experimentation that subvert painting itself. Despite their appearance, it could be argued that their works resemble paintings, yet they are not. Rather, they are images in perpetual modification which, among different processes, have been painted on. As a matter of fact, Linus Bill + Adrien Horni do not consider themselves painters: Bill studied photography, while Horni is trained a graphic designer. Nonetheless, they chose painting as their medium since they first started working together in 2011. In their continuous quest to repurpose and expand their work, Midlife Painting is the result of an intuitive revaluation of existing images in which the circumstance of failure leads to success.

For this solo presentation, the artists are presenting a series of “paintings” that were put aside in their studio throughout the years for not being convincing enough but nevertheless having material value. Recently, the artists turned back to those works with a desire to revise them in order to achieve better versions. Not working for an actual exhibition gave them the freedom of not needing a result. No need to succeed was very liberating: they would work outside, in front of the studio, on the floor, putting them aside to dry and look at them another day and decide whether or not to keep working on them. By interfering in try-outs and rejected works digitally and materially, their artistic practice is in constant motion and revision. To repeat, to alter, to modify, to layer, to transfer: a shifting interaction that destabilises romantic notions of painting and responds to a society where reality is pictorially altered at all times.

Linus Bill + Adrien Horni’s practice is liberated from technical burdens and schematic behaviours. They work in a rather visceral way, without a clear result in mind. Laying on their studio floor, the works present themselves as canvases ready to be altered throughout an indefinite stretch of time. There is no rush, precision and satisfaction do not come hastened, just like an artistic practice as a duo requires a suiting pace for conversation, (dis)agreement, and cross-pollination. That is not to say their practice is left to randomness. In reality, the presence of chance in their work is the result of a conscientious approach to replicate how in the digital world images are replicated, appropriated, deformed, and repurposed.

Interested in stripping bare the artistic and its traditional notions of originality, genius, and uniqueness, they create by multiplying images, in a most digitally common action of copy/paste, to afterwards merge them layer upon layer. Avoiding the art world’s diligent formula for creation - documentation - distribution, the artists approach their own process as their commissions to efficiently reproduce their own piece. The process of choosing and (re)making a painting requires a formula of action and reaction, of tossing the digital image to one another, of swapping works which to work on, to ultimately amalgamate all the interventions into a final result. Yet the work keeps on living, ready to be given another look, to be transformed yet again.

Both born in 1982, one in Geneva (CH) and the other in Jegenstorf (CH), Adrien Horni and Linus Bill live and work in Biel, Switzerland. Linus Bill + Adrien Horni were the winners of the Swiss Art Award in 2013. Recent presentations of their work include La fine ligne. Kunsthalle Saint Gallen, Saint Gallen, CH (2020), Un été indien. FRAC Normandie-Caen, Caen, FR (2020), Cantonale Berne Jura. La Nef, Le Noirmont, CH (2019), Linus Bill + Adrien Horni. La Salle de Bains, Lyon, FR (2018), Das Glied. ACRUSH, Zurich, CH (2018).

ELLEN DE BRUIJNE PROJECTS

Singel 372, 1016 AH, Amsterdam

www.edbprojects.com

Nacho Carbonell, Groninger Museum - Inspiration, evolution and transience

Nacho Carbonell

Inspiration, evolution and transience

Groninger Museum

22 November 2014 - 22 March 2015

The Groningen Museum presents the work of Nacho Carbonell (Valencia 1980), one of the most remarkable young designers of the present day. He graduated cum laude from the Design Academy Eindhoven, and at Design Miami Basel in 2009 he was proclaimed Designer of the Future. In that same year, the Design Museum in London nominated his Lover’s Chair as Design of the Year. The Groninger Museum has been following Nacho Carbonell for quite some time. This first large-scale solo exhibition, presenting much new work, forms the conclusion to this cooperation.

Objects that lie at the interface of design and art are a characteristic feature of Nacho Carbonell’s work. He has a recognizable form language and a striking choice of material. His work and work process are light-footed, but are simultaneously critical investigations into the relation between people and objects as well as their symbolic significance. In an ongoing experiment, he researches themes such as inspiration, evolution and transience. 

The interactive and behaviour-determining (or even coercive) elements are also of the utmost importance. For instance, Nacho Carbonell regards objects as a kind of organism that brings visitors to life when they use them. Creeping away, secluding oneself or hiding in cavernous forms is typical of his work, and evokes associations with scenes from the work of the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). 

GRONINGER MUSEUM

Museumeiland 1 - 9711 ME Groningen, The Netherlands

www.groningermuseum.nl

Piet Mondrian in Amsterdam 1892–1912, Amsterdam Museum

Mondrian in Amsterdam 1892–1912
Amsterdam Museum
11 October 2013 - 5 January 2014

The Amsterdam Museum reveals an unknown side of the world-famous artist Piet Mondrian. In his youth the pioneer of modern art lived and worked in Amsterdam for a long time. Mondrian in Amsterdam 1892–1912 examines the way the painter discovered his own style in and around the city—from the dark, realistic landscapes of his early years to his almost abstract rendition of the dazzling Mill in Sunlight (1908). For the first time this exhibition brings more than sixty of his works—most of them rarely shown—back to the city where they were painted a hundred years ago.

In October 1892 Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) enrolled as a student at the Amsterdamse Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten. This was the start of a period of twenty years in which his artistic talent reached full maturity. The city of Amsterdam, with its flourishing cultural climate, was an important source of inspiration. The Rijksmuseum had just opened and there was a huge rise in the number of art courses, artists and exhibitions. Piet Mondrian became friendly with fellow artists and joined the Arti et Amicitiae artists’ society.

In search of an individual style

During his time in Amsterdam Piet Mondrian was constantly seeking his own style. Initially he was influenced by trendsetters like Breitner and Isaac Israëls. He was then inspired by Symbolism, before concentrating on landscape painting for a prolonged period. In consequence, the exhibition contains many paintings of rural scenes in the countryside around Amsterdam. Mondrian was also often to be found further from the city. The Zeeland landscape was a particularly important source of inspiration for him, with the lighthouse at Westkapelle as one the best-known examples. When the work of Vincent van Gogh gained greater recognition around 1905 it is easy to see its influence in Piet Mondrian’s oeuvre. Van Gogh’s daring use of colour and his masterly handling of paint are echoed in Mill in Sunlight (1908), one of the highlights of the exhibition.

The indestructible link between art and philosophy

Another highlight in Piet Mondrian’s oeuvre and of the exhibition is Evolution, a painting dating from 1911. It clearly shows how much Mondrian was influenced by theosophy, the religious philosophical movement he had followed since 1908. In Evolution Mondrian expresses the most important theosophical dogma—the spiritual awakening of mankind in three stages. For Piet Mondrian art and philosophy were inextricably linked, and he remained a member of the Theosophical Society for the rest of his life.

Special exchange of works between Amsterdam and The Hague

All the paintings, prints and drawings in Mondrian in Amsterdam 1892–1912 come from the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. In exchange for the many important Mondrians, the Amsterdam Museum is lending some of its masterpieces to The Hague. This autumn nine of the finest paintings of anatomy lessons in the Amsterdam Museum collection will be exhibited in the Gemeentemuseum. 

AMSTERDAM MUSEUM
Kalverstraat 92, 1012 PH Amsterdam, Nederland
www.amsterdammuseum.nl

Hussein Chalayan, Groninger Museum - 10 years’ work

Hussein Chalayan, 10 years’ work
Groninger Museum
17 April - 4 September 2005

The Groningen Museum will display the first large-scale solo exhibition of the work of the British based Turkish Cypriot fashion designer Hussein Chalayan (Nicosia, 1970). In the past ten years Hussein Chalayan has created more than twenty collections of which the most important will be shown in the form of outfits, installations, photographic work, and video work. In conjunction with NAi Publishers, the first monograph on the work of Hussein Chalayan will be issued to accompany the exhibition, celebrating his tenth anniversary as a professional designer.

Hussein Chalayan belongs to the most innovative, experimental and conceptual fashion designers of the present day. With inspiration coming from various and assorted disciplines such as architecture, philosophy and anthropology, his oeuvre can be located at the interface between fashion and art. His themes often have a socio-cultural streak relating back to Hussein Chalayan’s personal history as someone who owes his identity to different cultures.

In 1993, Hussein Chalayan graduated from Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London with an eye-catching presentation for which he had first buried the garments. His use of innovative, unusual materials and unorthodox techniques, in combination with the conceptual wealth of his presentations, won him the title of Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards of 1999 and 2000. From 2001 onward, he has held his shows during the Prêt à Porter fashion weeks in Paris. He launched his first menswear collection in 2002, and since then he has participated in countless exhibitions worldwide, including Radical Fashion in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Fashion in the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, Airmail Clothing in Musée de la Mode Palais du Louvre in Paris, and the Biennale in Istanbul. In 2001/2002 he was Artist in Residence at the Wexner Center (State University of Ohio). In April 2004 Hussein Chalayan opened his first flagship store in Tokyo, which submerges customers in the Mediterranean atmosphere of Northern Cyprus.

In the exhibition, which will be held on two floors of the Museum, the much-discussed collection Afterwords (AW 2000-2001) will be shown. This collection refers to the reality of the refugee. In this, the upholstery is transformed into dresses, the chairs into suitcases, and the coffee table unfolds to become a skirt. Ambimorphous (AW 2002-2003), a project that covers cultural change, can be seen in the (fashion) show as a kind of journey from one culture to another, both geographically and temporally. The presentation begins with a model dressed in a completely ‘ethnic’ costume, and this is followed by models who gradually change clothes, piece by piece, ending with a modernist black outfit. A collection of photos has been made of these different outfits by Marcus Tomlinson, a video artist with whom Hussein Chalayan has often worked. Recent creations – the video work Place to Passage (2004), whose theme covers a(n) (internal) journey from London to Istanbul, and his latest work Anaesthetics (2004) – will also be on show in this first large-scale solo exhibition.

A monograph on the work of Hussein Chalayan has been published in conjunction with NAi Publishers Rotterdam. Authors: Caroline Evans, Suzy Menkes, Bradley Quinn, and Ted Polhemus. 176 pages, paperback, edited by Barbera van Kooij and Sue-an van der Zijpp, price Euro 29.50

Curator of the exhibition: Sue-an van der Zijpp 

GRONINGER MUSEUM
Museumeiland 1 - 9711 ME Groningen, The Netherlands
www.groningermuseum.nl