Group show

shining - close in value

Drawings from Germany

4 April - 6 May 2006

Show curated by Alf Lohr

Spring blew yellow leaves down Chepstow Place, consciously, quite consciously.
A pale blue crystal – or even better the poetic drawing of it, that allows it to breathe – sits at ease next to a drawing of a pile of concrete gravel – as though they were made by the same ……fear to have to perform – to remember your line – only an artist can describe the air between the mask and the skin, slightly warm, slightly damp in contrast to the dark and dusty half crescent of the shadows of the voyeurs. The space in between them and me, between the me and …….memory, knowledge – experience perhaps. These drawings are about space and spacing between lines or plains, compressed in layers, squeezed and dried behind a single sheet of glass. Art addresses freedom – the freedom to do so – avoiding repetition and variations on repetition in order to structure what should be seriously curly. Like curtains on a stage, these drawings distance themselves from the intellectual neediness to be illustrated thought or to shine as prima ballerinas.
Instead these biometric curtains carry themselves and open an investigation into a different world. We walk through their space with our eyes and emotions slowly opening and soon learn not to trust the surface, the news, the papers anymore – instead we look at things inside out again. Like the very best tailors, these artists make us want to see the seams they carefully unpicked
and put together again, concentrating on what it means today to focus. The style, their success abroad with much larger works in halls ten times the size of this gallery, seems less important than the intimacy that the works reveal in front of you. These drawings shine, when a flickering consciousness transforms closeness without distance to infinitive openness.
Alf Löhr

The exhibition “shining – close in value” was curated by Alf Löhr for Broadbent, following the success of “Quiet Strokes of a Night swimmer” at the Residency Gallery of the German Embassy, Feb. Mar. 2006 that featured the same artists.

Pat DeCaro

lives and works in Seattle. “Our House”, the title of her 2005 show at the Atelierhaus
Höherweg in Düsseldorf refers to the first universe of childhood and how we experience awareness of our self in relation to domestic surroundings. The situations she
creates are fluid yet momentous, deeply symbolic and yet casual. Her figures are shadows. Because of the way she draws them, they seem to be both grazing the surface and
dipping into the deep of primal need and desire. They are a deft attempt to deal with what is hidden, the first knowledge of the body, in Freud’s terms, a childish id being suppressed by the civilizing chill of the superego. Pat DeCaro’s work is in the collections of the Microsoft
Corporation, the Washington State University Museum of Art, SAFECO Corporation, Seattle Arts Commission and many others. She is represented by Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, and Bazart Contemporary Art, Milan.

Michael Jäger

“Jäger’s painting technique”, says the critic Stephan Berg “abides by the structure of ambiguity. While the painterly passages occasionally show a synthetic coolness, the
soberness of the plain coat of paint in the more monochromatic parts is counteracted by intentional individualities. Purity, we are told, is the death of the picture. The consequence
(itself paradoxical) which follows from this finding can be studied at length in the concepts behind Jäger’s work which in their absolute, radical ambivalence contemplate de-purification, as a possibility of speaking of purity without depicting it.” Born in 1956, Michael Jäger lives in
Cologne. Exhibitions include: 2006 Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 2005 Bellevue Saal, Wiesbaden (with Birgit Luxenburger), 2004 Morat Institut für Kunst, Freiburg, Städt.
Galerie Gladbeck, MUKA Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand.

Frauke Ehmke

Lives and works in London where she launched her career as a solo performance artist. In1998 she started collaborating with Foreign Investment with whom she worked for five
years. Founded in 2003, Detour Consulting is Frauke Ehmke’s solo work that was initially performance based. This new work employs a different approach, combining drawing and performance. At Broadbent she shows her most recent work on paper. ‘These drawings are majestic in size and energy, and totally absorbing. Great scrawling lines track the body’s movement over paper. They are rich with possible interpretations.’ Catherine Langford.

Camill Leberer

Born in 1953, Camill Leberer lives in Stuttgart. Exhibitions include: 2005 Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2004 Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Galerie Erhard Witzel, Wiesbaden, 2003 Museum Goch, Galerie Wassermann, München, Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Köln. Camill Leberer’s work is in the collections of (I can’t believe it’s permanently displayed…) the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Museum für
Moderne Kunst Wien, Kunstsammlung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and other public and private collections.

Frank Michael Zeidler

From large-scale black and white drawings to completely white paper, Frank Michael Zeidler explores the phenomenon of light with the aim of gradually moving towards the colour yellow. Born in1952 in Leipzig, Zeidler is based in Potsdam and has been awarded prizes by numerous institutions such as the Neuen Darmstädter Sezession, Akademie der Künste, Ise Augustin Stiftung, Berlin. He painted the interior of the German Embassy in Finland and Schloss Heemstede in Holland and is currently designing a stage set for a German Opera company.

Jo Schöpfer

Jo Schöpfer’s drawings make use of the most basic forms of architecture that, outside their original context and filtered by the objectification of form, assert themselves autonomously.
His work is created in continuous dialogue with architecture, showing its hidden dimension. Born in 1951 in Coburg, Jo Schöpfer lives in Berlin. Exhibitions include: 2005 “Wittgenstein in NewYork”, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, 2004 David Museum, Wellesley MA, USA and Kunsthalle Kiel, Galerie Nicole Schlegl, Zürich, Switzerland. Public art commissions include the new Staatsbibliothek Berlin, the Finanzamt Stuttgart, the Grand Hyatt at Potsdammer Platz
Berlin, the Aussgleichs Bank, Bonn.

Alf Löhr

In her essay “From visual pleasure to emotional experience”, the curator Felicity Lunn writes “in order to remain open to what they might reveal, we have to allow ourselves to be
seduced by the paintings in the first instance, to be confronted directly by their generosity and the straightforwardness of the materials that the artist has restricted to fundamentals – light, colour and water and paper/canvas. The German word for seduction, „verführen“, has a force that is missing from the English, a hint of being misled that comes close to the way in which Löhr’s work takes the viewer through the immediate sensuousness to a darker and more complex environment.” Born in 1957, Löhr lives in London and Melbourne. Recent exhibitions include, Firstsite, Colchester, Pumphouse Gallery London, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall.

FINISSAGE 19 May 2006

Poetry and The Critical Harp by Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer is News Editor and London Correspondent for Contemporary magazine, for which he writes a monthly column on the London artworld; Assistant Editor at Third Text; and Art Editor of Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing. He has lectured at Goldsmith – MA Fine Art and Art History, Sothebys – MA Fine Art and the Kent Institute of Art and Design – MA Time Based Media.

He is a widely published art critic, reviewer, poet, fiction writer and blues harmonica player, performing under the title of The Critical Harp. His critical writing has appeared in Frieze, Flash Art, Art Press, Third Text, Wasafiri, The Guardian, Time Out, Citizen K, Rapid Eye, Performance Magazine and many other publications and catalogues. His poetry and fiction have been published in Contemporary, Ambit, Moving Worlds, Die Ausensites des Elementes, Junger Welt and Cronica Latina. He has read at the Galway Literary Festival, the Hackney Literary Festival and at Blacks, The Colony Club and the French House.

Although generally known as an art critic Richard Dyer has been leading a double life as a Blues harmonica player and poet for many years. He recently played in Berlin at the famous punk club Wild At Heart, with The Blockheads at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, Maxi Geil at Sketch and the Great Eastern Hotel (recently signed to Fred Label records) and at The Café Royal with Claire Nicholson. He played with The Ken Ardley Playboys (Bob and Roberta Smith’s band) at the Hackney Empire, The Serpentine Gallery, and at the re-opening of Beconsfied Gallery. He has also played with the pianist Kenny Clayton at the Colony Room Club and Gerry’s Theatre Club, Soho, Louie Hoover at the French House and at The Grouch Club. Previously he has played at The Hammersmith Odeon, Manchester Apollo and the Camden Palace. He has also played at many private parties, gallery openings and at the Venice Biennale Australia party and live on Bloomberg/PS1 radio on the Bloomberg party boat on the Grand Canal. He often combines music and poetry in his performances.

His latest publication is Electronic Shadows: The Art of Tina Kean, (Black Dog, 2004), with Jean Fisher and Peter Wollen and his latest poems appeared in the 45 year anniversary issue of Ambit, issue 180, spring 2005.