The following blog has acted as a pre cursor to the exhibition Celestial Contrakt which opened on the 12th November at Schwartz Gallery, Hackney Wick, and is now in it’s fourth week. Curated by Christina Mitrentse and Jonas Ranson the show has brought together works by 10 National and International artist’s. Schwartz projects are known for a series of strong and dynamic shows which have seen the introduction of a flexible exhibition-making strategy in line with current curatorial debate.
Celestial Contakt Documentation Installation shots Novemeber 2009
In these photographs:
Nikos Alexiou Grid . Installation, variable dimensions . Paper, bamboo, linen, black enamel
Lee Wagstaff Birth/Shroud . Blood on linen . 2003
Marc Wayland Foetal at Forty . Digital print on silk . 2004
Christina Mitrentse Constellation . Diamond pins, fabric, bed. 2007-2009
Jonas Ranson Apotrope . Screen print on mirror glass and board . Edition of 3 . 2009 . Berührt – Verführt ( Diptych ) . Screen-print on paper and board . Edition of 5 . 2009
Stine Ljungdalh The Bull as Alchemia, Examines the Alchemistic quote: ‘Marriage gum with gum in true Marriage . C-type, Art no. 00A1871 ( Kindly lent by The Hunting Society’s Art Collection ) . 2009
Dominic Allan Whore . Kid’s bicycle saddle, joggle eyes . 2009
Bern Roche Farrelly Black Blank, Colour Color, Croma Coma . Video installation . 2008
Celestial Contakt Documentation Installation shots Novemeber 2009
In these photographs:
Nikos Alexiou Grid . Installation, variable dimensions . Paper, bamboo, linen, black enamel
Lee Wagstaff Birth/Shroud . Blood on linen . 2003
Marc Wayland Foetal at Forty . Digital print on silk . 2004
Christina Mitrentse Constellation . Diamond pins, fabric, bed. 2007-2009
Jonas Ranson Apotrope . Screen print on mirror glass and board . Edition of 3 . 2009 . Berührt – Verführt ( Diptych ) . Screen-print on paper and board . Edition of 5 . 2009
Stine Ljungdalh The Bull as Alchemia, Examines the Alchemistic quote: ‘Marriage gum with gum in true Marriage . C-type, Art no. 00A1871 ( Kindly lent by The Hunting Society’s Art Collection ) . 2009
Dominic Allan Whore . Kid’s bicycle saddle, joggle eyes . 2009
Bern Roche Farrelly Black Blank, Colour Color, Croma Coma . Video installation . 2008
Christina Mitrentse investigates the esoteric qualities of myth, interpretation and cultural construction through processes of painting, handcrafted sculpture, installation and conceptual appropriation. Her practice oscillates between that of curator, collector and storyteller in an endeavor to designate the peculiarity of this relational space of aesthetics.
Ignoring traditional hierarchies of display, Mitrentse creates a freedom to suggest new narratives and poetic ensembles of personal institutions such as schools, libraries, churches, academies and museums. Using the tropes of quasi-science, telluric monuments and celestial exploration, her work offers an ocularcentric pattern of discovering worlds within worlds and meaning in allegory.
Through sustained research of cosmological phenomena, explicit for the Celestial Contrakt, she has created an emergent sculptural ‘Constellation’ which suggests a humorous, visual transmission from the banal to the monumental. Mitrentses’ use of magnitude relates to her fascination with the spatial model and scale of the megacosm depicted in the Still Life- ‘The book of Universe’. Navigating within these works, we are related to a conception in which the ‘primary’ form of the universe is defined by the significations of natural occurrences within everyday life.
Mitrentse is a Greek visual artist and art educator based in London East End since 2000. With an Onassis foundation fellowship, she holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design and a PGCE from University of Greenwich. Her artworks are included in both private and public collections in Europe and the United States. Selected shows include: Solo- Building My Library,NO:IDgallery ‘09, Brench/Absorb ,Oblong gallery 09, In/Flux HTAP, London 09, Brussels Art Fair ‘09 The Apartment Gallery Athens. Impromptu,Schwartz Gallery London ’09. Public Project Commission, Greenwich Foot Tunnel 08-09 London. The End of the Earth’NDSM- Amsterdam 08.‘Emerging Artists’,Griechishe Kultustiftung Berlin 06. The Secret School Solo show in a bomb shelter, London 05. An Outing, Contemporary Art from Beltsios Collection Athens 06. She also co-curates international shows in London and Greece, most noticeably ‘Who Cares About Greek Art?’ Athens 06, and ‘The Flat Pack’ Deptford London06.
Celestial Contrakt Opening
6pm – 11pm Thursday 12 November
Featuring Audio Live Mix by Exitjesus Live Music by Douce Angoisse and living sculptural performance of Croma Collapse by Berne Roche Farrelly
Artist Profiles
Andrew Hladky
Andrew Hladky is a London based artist who graduated from Wimbledon School of Art with an MA Painting in 2003. Andrew describes his painting technique as a 3-dimensional form of Pointillism. He constructs his paintings using cocktail sticks, dabbing small dots of oil paint in layer after layer. These slowly build into stalactite formations; delicate mineral crusts up to 4cm deep. From the side this highly textured surface causes the image to distort and break-down, dissolving into disorder. Andrew paints images choked by their overabundance, all sentiment and nostalgia defeated by blank, repetitive process. Sunsets multiply across the sky and horizons pile one on top of the other, creating inescapable, alien landscapes. Worms of paint squeezed straight from the tube populate the image, mingling with the figures and environment, threatening to over-run it entirely. Paint mingles with painted figures to create a Bosch-like scene of worm-human hybrids. The worms of paint will start to spill off the painting, roving the walls, ceiling and floor, reforming occasionally into sculptural tableaux where delicate, multicoloured trees grow and miniature figures pull themselves out of the paint.
www.commentart.com/artist/Andrew_Hladky
