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Versione
italiana
9 April – 17 May 2003
hours: Tues-Sat 11 – 19 except holidays
The exhibition by the German artist Carsten Nicolai opens on
Wednesday 9 April, at 6 PM, at the Paolo Curti/Annamaria Gambuzzi &
Co. gallery.
Born in 1965 in Karl-Marx Stadt (previously Chemnitz,
RDT), initially an apprentice gardener, then a landscape architect,
Carsten Nicolai began his activity as an artist in 1986 Leipzig.
He has already shown his work at the Milan gallery of Paolo Curti/Annamaria
Gambuzzi in 2001, and participated that same year at the Venice
Biennial with a solo room.
Interaction of video imagery, sound and painting is a constant in
Nicolai’s work. He has created electronic music for years, using
the pseudonym noto. A visit to his website www.raster-noton.de is
an interesting experience, to see all his various projects.
In this show the artist presents a series of works that intuitively
correspond to concepts of modular standardization,
industrialization and repetitive systems contained in the utopian
ideals of modernism. These principles of modularity and
standardization formed the inspiration for the architecture of Le
Corbusier, the Bauhaus and, later, the school of Ulm, but then
became, in Nicolai’s view, the limited definition of a non-creative
system, due to excessively literal application through methods of
industrialization.
To rivitalize creativity, in this exhibition Nicolai “restructs”
the reaction to modular forms, inviting visitors to force
individuality back into the grid by means of logical systems
controlled by the artist’s hand. On a central platform identical
three-dimensional forms physically interlock, building a repetitive
surface. Visitors are encouraged to interact with this surface,
extracting forms and re-building new structures. On the walls there
are two-dimensional interpretations of this repetitive pattern, in
the form of screen-printed monochrome designs, where certain
segments have been blacked out by the artist, generating a “virus
effect”, together with other original monochromes ready for
activation by the viewer. The overall regulation of the design is
random, allowing new models to develop.
These “Restructs” remind us of earlier works by Nicolai, such as
the “Random Dot Paintings” and “Snow Noise”, where the artist
explored the random results caused by similar logical processes, to
question what is behind our creative force and thinking. In this
exhibition Nicolai extends his interest in the concept of process,
particularly that of display, also in relation to the materials
generated.
Selected solo shows: Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin 1994); New York
Kunsthalle (New York 1996); Produktionen 1999/2000, Kunsthalle
Vierseithof (Luckenwalde 1999); Paolo Curti & Co. (Milan 2001);
Watari-um, Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo 2002).
Major group shows: Cadavere Exquis, Drawing Center (New York 1993);
Welt Moral, Kunsthalle Basel (Basel 1994); Documenta X (Kassel
1997); Examining Pictures: Whitechapel Art Gallery (London 1999),
Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago 1999) Armand Hammer Museum of
Art (Los Angeles 2000); Empty Garden, Watari-Um Museum (Tokyo
1999); Audible Images, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago
2001); Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul 2001); Venice Biennial (Venice
2001); Art/Music: Rock, Pop, Punk, Techno, Museum of Contemporary
Art (Sydney 2001); Media Connection, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome
2001), Palazzo della Triennale (Milan 2001); Frequenzen (hz),
Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt/Main 2002).
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