Artists Lucas Blalock, Marieta Chirulescu, Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Eileen Quinlan
Venue Bergen Kunsthall
Images Thor Brødreskift/Bergen Kunsthall
In the work of Eileen Quinlan and Lucas Blalock, photography is used not
only to document a reality beyond the camera lens, but also as a
technical process through which the image is created or situated by
means of it’s chemical or digital apparatus. In Quinlan’s work she
manipulates negatives by scratching or subjecting them to corrosive
chemicals or processes. In another series she employs a flatbed scanner,
producing a kind of “anti-abstraction” using mirrors and other
objects and materials that she places or moves across the scanners
surface. Blalock’s work often begins with a staged, studio set up—a
kind of “still life—that he photographs using a medium format camera
and then manipulates, using Photoshop and digital post-production
techniques, to create provocative and complex analogue / digital
hybrids.
Marieta Chirulescu and Ann Cathrin November Høibo’s works are located
in painting, sculpture and textile, but they too engage in similar
processes of manipulation, production and reproduction. Chirulescu also
employs scanners, copiers and post-production tools in order to produce
her canvases, which involve a complex layering of real and virtual
materials and spaces, whilst continuing to allude to a tradition of
painting. Høibo’s work is perhaps the most sculptural, exploring the
inherent materiality of various found and altered textiles, fabrics, and
objects. In her hand-woven tapestries, one can see an improvised,
personal, but almost mechanical production, again referring directly to
the technology of the loom, but through this more explicitly craft-based
technique.
Through their very different studio-based practices, the four artists
all work in the borderland between creating images and locating images.
The final work arises by way of a self-reflexive investigation of the
material itself, a process that lays the basis for improvisation and
exploration, and which often permits chance and “errors” in
production to become crucial to the image-making process. In this way
they reveal that the material of an artwork is not just a physical
foundation or support for an image; in many cases it constitutes both
the image itself and the content of the work.
Curated by Martin Clarck and Steinar Sekkingstad.
Lucas Blalock (b. 1978), lives and works in New York.
Marieta Chirulescu (b. 1974), lives and works in Berlin and Rome.
Ann Cathrin November Høibo (b. 1979), lives and works in Kristiansand.
Eileen Quinlan (b. 1972), lives and works in New York.
