ART DÜSSELDORF

Bartha Contemporary at ART DÜSSELDORF
Areal Boehler, 40549

PRESS RELEASE

Bartha Contemporary is pleased to participate in the second edition of Art Düsseldorf, the leading contemporary art-fair located between two cultural regions of Germany’s Rheinland and Ruhr-area.

The booth will feature a showcase of works by the late New York painter James Howell, alongside a presentation of works by Sarah Chilvers, Susan Morris and Allyson Strafella.

James Howell’s (1935-2014) lifelong study into the properties of colour perception, occupies an unique place in the recent history of painting. Described as looking into fog, each piece is part of consistent body of work, depicting a carefully calibrated gradation of grays. Concerned with the subtle movement of light, Howell’s refined works invite the viewer to consider the possibilities within a conceptual framework, that is simultaneously narrow and infinite. The experience of Howell’s paintings are an existential exploration into the process of seeing. The presentation at Art Düsseldorf offers an opportunity to view the work of this radical painter within the broader context of current art practice. A monograph by Dr. Alistair Rider on the life and work of James Howell will be published by Circa Publishing, London in 2019. This presentation is made possible with support from The James Howell Foundation, New York.

A focused both featuring works by three female artists, Sarah Chilvers, Susan Morris and Allyson Strafella, who all recently exhibited at the gallery in London will complement the gallery showcase. 

British artist Sarah Chilvers (b. 1970) will be presenting a suite of recent paintings, which combine her exceptional sense for colour and intricate compositions. Painted on loosely cut plywood panels, the precise nature of each work is intentionally put in contrast by the imperfections of their support. This interplay between the accidental and highly conceived, as well as the laborious execution result in mesmerizing works that capture the viewer’s attention and takes them on a journey of discovery, wonder and disorientation.

Modern technology, the recording of time, and the documentation of movement come together in Susan Morris’s (b. 1962) work. By using tools such as digital tracking devices worn on the body, the artist records her daily routine or seemingly repetitive gestures to produce images that reveal a body caught up in the machinations of clock and calendrical time. At the centre of Morris’s practice, explored through a range of different media, is the very traditional idea of an artist’s self-portraiture serving as a commentary on subjectivity in general.

American artist Allyson Strafella’s (b. 1969) drawings made over the past three decades expose the artist’s refined minimalist language, that relies both on audacious mark-making and a striking use of colour. Instead of traditional drawing tools Allyson Strafella has been working with typewriters, standard and custom built. Using sheets of pigmented handmade paper, she creates assured abstract forms by applying dense repetitive marks. These concentrated forms are derived from the natural and constructed landscape, which suggest a surprising familiarity.

ART COLLECTOR
Gegen den Strich. Ein Grafik_Spezial | December 2018 (p. 8-10)

Gravitational waves by Agnes D. Schofield

The brush of an artwork can be tender as well as brutal. The sketch stands for the experiment, the search. Artists working on paper don’t choose the straight way, they rather explore. By doing that magnificent as well as independent artwork can arise.

Drawings as access to the world. The drawing, or even more the sketch, stands for the experiment, the search, the tangible thought. Draftsmen do not go straight to a destination, they explore and sometimes find something unimaginable. In drawing, the world of images slowly emerges, creating contexts, interplay and immediate relationships.

At first there is a white sheet. When I set a line, I have to respond to that line, and so on. Drawing is a demanding mental task. The brain works and the hand too. The eye anyway. It looks at what should be drawn, and then looks at what is arising. Or it looks inward and then lets the hand draw its drawing. The drawing has always adhered to this direct expressiveness.

Even if apparatuses take over the drawing (see plotter drawings) today, it is still about this original gesture. The red chalk drawing from the Renaissance are today no longer special, so virtuoso their style, the pictures do not provoke our viewing habits. The drawing artist had arrived at the zenith at that time, now drawings arise in space, as installations - or just in the mind - thanks to artistic instructions. A selection of exciting contemporary art works, which are sometimes more, sometime less related to drawing.

Poetic Self-Control

Drawing has always had something personal, intimate. Susan Morris is especially revealing. She wants to capture all hidden physical processes. She succeeds by writing down her physical and mental states, but also using digital tracking devices (such as the Actiwatch) to track them down. Day after day. Even at night. This is how the artist records her everyday life and exposes her body as being caught up in the power of the times. With this work, she also places herself in the tradition of artistic self-portraiture and diary writing (with which the Surrealists were also concerned) - but both of these, thanks to new digital technology, increase them to the ultimate, to the uncanny.

Everything is registered (even the menstrual cycles). What is private, protected, mine? All the more surprising, that this questionable practice creates beautiful pictures. They are almost poetic, but by no means threatening. Morris works with scientific rigour and systematic. Like an apparatus. If it were not for the second step, the transfer of the picture onto a picture carrier - whereby the work aesthetically comes to life. Morris' traces of life can be seen, for example, in tapestries, as recently on the Art Düsseldorf. At the end of each year, she sends the files on her sleep patterns to a factory in Belgium, where they are converted into differently coloured yarn, which is then woven.

Susan Morris, born 1962 in Birmingham, studied at the University of Arts London. Her work has been shown outside of England, among others, in the exhibition "Thinking in Algorithms" at Scheublein + Bak in Zurich or "Self Moderation" at the CentrePasquArt in Biel, in Germany at the Kunstraum Alexander Bürkle in Freiburg.

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