Christine Streuli / Anna Bjerger

Mostra personale di Christine Streuli nello spazio principale e mostra personale di Anna Bjerger nella Project Room.

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Christine Streuli Ickelackebana

We are pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Christine Streuli.
In the context of contemporary painting Christine Streuli holds a special position: she operates with a multifaceted sign language that draws on the most varied sources from art history to Pop culture. Using symmetry, reflection and repetition, the artist develops patterns and ornamental structures. The multilayered composition of her paintings derives not only from the superimposition of these elements, but also from the deliberate combination of different painterly approaches. Streuli is not a classical artist painting in the traditional way: she rarely paints with the brush. She often uses transfer techniques, as stencils, sprays and decalcomania. Despite this transposition and the meditative distance created, her paintings are very direct and emotional, not least because of the signs and the daring coloration.

Streuli’s works unfold their high energy levels through abstract signs of velocity, temperature, colour tone and spatiality. Quotes, repetitions and mirror effects animate the pictorial scores that are as spontaneous in appearance as they are sophisticated in their planning and execution. The artist always adheres to the thought of “both-and” instead of “either-or”, working both into the plane and in depth. She succeeds in relating vigorously agitated elements to thoroughly organised graphical quotations, so that each new work generates the impression of comprehensive simultaneity. Therefore Streuli’s paintings can also be read as statements on the prevailing global information community, which poses a challenge to every individual by its boundless availability. Streuli’s fierce paraphrases open hitherto unseen, utopian fields of experience. They cannot be reduced to specific messages and singular statements because their immediate aim is the emotional state of the viewer who, if he is willing to embark on this journey of signs and colours, senses that he is being seduced while he is being enabled to enjoy surprisingly new experiences within these pictorial worlds.

Christine Streuli was born in Bern in 1975 and she currently lives in Berlin. She studied both in Zurich and Berlin. She participated in the International Studio and Curatorial Program New York (2001/02) and was granted the Yvonne Lang-Chardonnens-Scholarship (2002) as well as a scholarship in San Francisico (2005) and she was artist-in-residence in Cairo, Egypt (2003). In 2007 Christine Streuli represented Switzerland at the 52. Venice Biennial and in 2014 she participated in the 19. Sydney Biennial. She had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Langenthal (2007) Kunsthaus Aarau (2008), Helmhaus Zurich (2009), Kunstverein Oldenburg (2009), Museum Marta Herford in Herford, Germany (2010), Kunstmuseum Luzern (2013) and Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2013).

Project Room: Anna Bjerger

In the Project Room we will present recent paintings by Anna Bjerger.
The paintings of Anna Bjerger capture fleeting moments. We, the viewer, are involved in the paintings as covert onlookers. A tense relationship occurs between the actions represented in the painting and our inclusion as a spectator.
Bjerger works from found photographs, mostly collected from out of date reference books and travel manuals. She is utilizing the photograph's ability to capture short-lived moments and actions. By painting these images, she salvages what would otherwise be lost moments - recreating them as painting, the most permanent of mediums. In her technique, Bjerger does not approach the photograph in a cold, distant manner - her painting is rich and loose, removing the image from its origins and injecting an emotive, atmospheric flavor into the scenes.

The images Bjerger chooses often have a generic quality. The original meaning is private and unknown and can therefore be translated into paintings of people and places that hold no direct associations for the viewer. The who, when and where of these paintings always remains ambiguous, unspecified. There is an outdated, almost nostalgic quality in her choice of images - innocent childhoods, tentative romance, glorious scenery - and subsequently there is a romantic yet also sinister flavor to these scenes.

The events are often idyllic and beautiful - children playing in a field, a couple taking a walk through a forest - yet also very mundane. Bjerger involves the viewer, positioning us as an actual spectator in the scene. This is directly acknowledged in ‘Snap’, in which a woman focuses a camera towards the viewer. In many of the works, however, there is a feeling of intrusion, voyeurism, at bearing witness to these intimate, private moments. This role is most explicitly addressed in ‘Jumper’, which portrays the classic image of peeping tomism: a woman undressing. Seen through the window, she has a perfect figure, her sight temporarily obscured as she pulls her clothes over her head. It is a charged as well as ridiculous image - the ultimate adolescent fantasy - and Bjerger emphasises our exploitative, predatory gaze with her seductive handling of paint and the graceful, careful composition of the image. Few painters working today match Anna Bjerger’s evocative powers.

Anna Bjerger was born in Skallsjo, Sweden in 1973. She studied at Central St. Martin’s School of Art (BA 1997) and at the Royal College of Art (MA 2001) in London. She has exhibited in Scandinavia, Great Britain and in the USA.

IMMAGES:
Chritine Streuli Füllschaum, 2014 mixed media on canvas, cm 120 x 85
Anna Bjerger Smoke, 2010 oil on canvas, cm 40 x 30