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Posted: 7 December 2023
Posted: 7 Dec 2023
Toby Christian joins the gallery
Fine art and fine writing are the grains of Toby Christian’s (b. 1983, Boston, Lincolnshire, UK) creative practice. Precise and objective, his artworks can be seen as post-modern dérives; close readings which position a viewer, a reader, in new emotive proximities with the ‘stuff’ of his subject matter—be this the arbitrary and mundane or the antiquated museological. His works are wide ranging, multifaceted, incorporating installation and sculpture, drawing as well as animation. Uniting these facets, is a practice of descriptive writing. More than documentary records, which find material forms through his episodic artworks, Toby’s writing leans into analogy and ekphrasis, embracing the potentialities of parataxis also, to create specific linguistic environments that house his visual workings. Here, slow looking foregrounds the delicacy of an encounter. Indeed, here slow looking foregrounds the delicacy of “sequential presents”, at once a reference to how different bodies see the world in different ways but also a nod to the myriad ways a body can see the world if curious-looking enough.
The expanded sculptural field of Toby’s writing does not aspire to be a place of romantic encounter; his writerly reflections are objective, present tense, to the point. Much like his visual work. Often palimpsest in form and with a directly analogous feel, Toby’s artworks are what they are—nothing is encoded, code is just presented differently. This is reflected in Toby’s belief – “there isn’t anything [in my artworks that] you can’t understand by just looking”.
An example of his singular poetics can be seen in Toby’s Stringer studies, 2022-date. First displayed as part of his solo exhibition, no odonata (Belmacz, 2023), the thread-like loops that compose these carbon copy drawings directly reproduce the visual output of an application Toby has been developing since 2020. Titled ‘Stringer’, this immersive programme literally makes the knotty connotations of language seen, in three-dimensional form. Encountering the Stringer programme, one speaks a word or sentence into the software’s interface which is retuned with a unique ‘string sculpture,’ a highly detailed render which softly floats towards the speaker. Not only an abstract translation of the spoken word, these digital sculptures are sensitive contortions, textured by the tone and timbre of a speaker’s voice. Reproduced as drawings on linen, Toby’s Stringer studies are unpredictable and ethereal. Patterned with the trace of his own hand, these drawings become moments for witnessing the very trends of communication, how language moves to and from and through the body—between bodies also.
Echoing his interest in the way words can shift and shimmer through modes of communication, the latency within acts of material translation and change are key resources for Toby. What is left, the stains of a process, is as interesting to Toby as that which is physically relayed. His ‘paintings’, such as Drives Often Understory, 2023, are figureless scenes; they depict the ghost or memory, the trace of a trace, of Toby’s artistic presence. Loose and gestural, like white horses erupting from a pitch-black sea, fizzing, the paintings in this series are produced using the dusty remainders of Toby’s previous artworks—be these performative or sculptural. Set out upon a new black background the chips of marble and clouds of chalk dust that layer to form the rippling skin of these paintings, personify something of Toby’s visceral approach to his artistic process. Here, the amassment of minute grains directly alludes to the latent aspects of his making—the remnants of his carving and drawing practice specifically. By repositioning the refuse of artistic life, these paintings render bare process newly emotive and proximate—we can almost hear them crackling.
a selection of Toby’s works is available to view online here
Toby’s artist page can be found here -
Posted: 5 December 2023
Posted: 5 Dec 2023
2024 exhibition programme
2024 is set to be a year of conversations. New voices join ‘old’, enthusing our year ahead with a feverish spirit of dialogue and curiosity. We look forward to welcoming you 🔜
Charlott Weise: For these thoughts we change into pink
19 January – 8 MarchTim Berresheim & rechonski: temporal spelunking
20 March – 26 AprilMichela de Mattei & Toby Christian: FLASH_LOOKING
8 May – 5 JulyCarla Åhlander & Aaron Amar Bhamra: Holding Places
12 July – 27 SeptemberTotal Theatre ESP, a group show
11 October – 20 December -
Posted: 5 December 2023
Posted: 5 Dec 2023
Charlott Weise in KISS MY SOUL,/i>
now open, two works by Charlott Weise feature in the group exhibition KISS MY SOUL – Heavenly & Earthly Love in Contemporary Art at Dordrechts Museum (the Netherlands).
Bringing together works by 30 artists, this exhibition provides an overview into contemporary depictions of love and the associated sensations: lust, heartbreak, melancholy, longing, etc., etc.
Dordrechts Museum
Museumstraat 40
3311 XP Dordrecht
the Netherlands
until 3 March 2024 -
Posted: 5 December 2023
Posted: 5 Dec 2023
Camilla Løw, Portalen
delighted to announce that Camilla Løw’s most recent public artwork has been unveiled. Titled Portalen [The Portal], the folly-like structure sits within the newly developed Søndre Borgen activity park. Rendered in pastel shades, pavilion-equse building creates a natural gathering point within the park. Indeed, with its open form, Portalen is a sculptural invitation to be used by all those in the park.
Søndre Borgen activity park
Søndre Borgen 16
1388 Asker
Norway -
Posted: 8 November 2023
Posted: 8 Nov 2023
Charlott Weise joins the gallery
We are delighted to announce our formal representation of Charlott Weise!
Often described by the artist as ‘forms of intuitive visual writings’, throughout Charlott’s practice visual idioms corralled from literature, the urban world and fashion as well as the history of art collide in fluid narratives. Rather than steadfast scenarios however, the semi-abstracted forms within her scenes unfold as gestural prompts; allusions to ways of being, and further, to the made-up of an existence. Indeed, writ loose, those bodies birthed forth in Charlott’s swathes of pigment, oil, ink, sanguine crayon and on occasion blusher sit restively with the context of their world; through moments of rupture, challenge and provocations these bodies emerge.
Echoing something of Cy Twombly’s philosophy that “to paint involves a certain crisis, or at least a crucial moment of sensation or release”, Charlott works through an “ecstatic impulse”; a way of working that fundamentally aligns with her restless use of subject matter. That is, her paintings emerge through a visceral dialogue, the active meeting of paint and surface. Her series, Notes on Wine (2021) is perhaps indicative of this approach. Developed as part of her residency at the vineyard of Cascina Gilli, NEVVEN, Piedmont, Italy this series of portable paintings fold together the site and social specificities of classic wine production as well as disparate references from classical mythology to Hollywood gossip, to compose a body of work which reflects something of the hazy escapes found in the consumption of rouge night nectar— aka, the full-bodied red flowing from the Piedmont’s regions vineyards: wine.
There is elegance in this metaphysical amassment. A careful process of maceration whereby figures, rendered with soft flesh tones, draw us into an unembarrassed world of crimson ripples. As with Charlott’s wider practice, the paintings in this series emerge from an interior space fertile in associative ideas, sensations and desires.
Not only confined onto the stretched canvas form, Charlott’s practice is one of risk. Seeking to experiment with how far she can push and pull her subject through the formalities of a material body, the artist allows formal painting and fleeting sketch to conflate. In her large sail shaped paintings in He at Sea (2018), Charlott unmoors common archetypes, re-rendering masculine ideals by depicting virile body forms in states of emotional recline. Paired with seascape iconography, seahorses, stars and sun-bleached beaches, the bodies seen act as protagonists; they rise and fall and waver, rejoicing and jesting to each other, becoming liquid and wholly immersed in an ego-erotic reality, only found beyond the hard shores of dogmatic life. We can read a critical urgency here, much like Charlott’s wider practice, the series has a tone best expressed in the formal struggle as the painter moves between her medium and the bodily.
Charlott’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, For these thoughts we change into pink, will open in January 2024.
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Posted: 1 November 2023
Posted: 1 Nov 2023
Kindred Open Studios
on Saturday 11 November, Abbas Zahedi will be opening his studio as part of Kindred’s Autumn Open Studios programme. Alongside being able to view a range of artist’s studios the day includes talks, tours and free workshops.
Kindred Studios
13 Market Lane
Shepherds Bush,
London, W12 8EZ
11 November, 12-9pm
further information -
Posted: 1 November 2023
Posted: 1 Nov 2023
three screenings of Turtleneck Phantasies
November 2023, Gernot Wieland’s film 2022 Turtleneck Phantasies will be screened this month as part of the following film festivals:
17th Short Film Festival, Cologne
14 – 19 November
further information40. Kasseler Dokumentar, Film und Videofest, Kassel, Germany
14 – 19 November
further information31. Blicke – Filmfestival des Ruhrgebiets, Bochum, Germany
22 – 26 November
further information -
Posted: 1 November 2023
Posted: 1 Nov 2023
printed this month, Agata Madejska features in the new issue of Trigger—an online and printed magazine concerning photography and critique. Accompanying an essay, written by Duncan Wooldridge, the wider issue reflects on the possible ways photography might start to unlearn entrenched ideas and habits concerning the use and abuse of energy.
publication launch event 14 November
FOMU, Antwerp
further information