Group Show - Sine Qua Non
30 Jun - 30 Jul 2005
Bischoff/Weiss is pleased to announce
Sine Qua Non, an exhibition of works by international artists
originating from America, France, Germany, Italy and England at their
new space on Rivington Street.
Ali Silverstein (Anglo-American, borm in 1980). Lives and works in London
"The practice of seeing a thing as if born that very moment (continuously) exposes the truth that nothing is self-contained; everything enters something else", Ali observes. "I started making the blind watercolours of still-lifes purely as a discipline, as a practice of viewing intimately and presently. Without aesthetic judgment or concern, without critical distance, without looking at the paper, I try to simply record what I see, to trace the being-there as I look."
"Making paintings grom gridded photographs is a differnt process with the same aim. The grid, first of all, abstracts the image into unnameable shapes and colours. I build the work more architecturally and methodically, like a poem. Choosing the shapes and colours like words to build the skin and skeleton of an image and hopefully to make something that questions its own stability and solidity. So pulled apart and separated, so transparent and deconstructed, can we still name it like a solid thing?"
Ali Silverstein graduated from Slade with an MA in 2005.
Benedetto Pietromarchi (Italien, born in 1972). Lives and works in London.
In the Assenti series Pietromarchi works on representing the realm of limbo in wich linger missing people. Neither fully present nor absent, each bust represents a person who disappeared. By partially obscuring the content of each box, Pietromarchi forces the onlooker to explore angles and perspectives in a attempt to catch a glimpse of the person inside. Only by creating distance between the piece and the viewer can the face be seen in full - up close, it completely disappears. In 1997, Benedetto Pietromarchi graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arte de Carrara (It.). In 2002, he also attended the workshop of Giulio Paolini thank to a prize he was awarded to go Fondazione Antonio Ratti of Como.
John Powers (American, born in 1970). Lives and works in Brooklyn.
"My sculpture uses a single repeated modular shape: blocks proportioned 1x2x3. While this shape remains constant, the size, materials, manufacture, color and assembly vary widely. Because the work is labor intensive I have ample time to consider why I' m doing. I think of an artistic project as an opportunity to build a visual rhetoric. My project is an argument made gradually, each separate project, linked by their common element - the block. Like a microcosm of art in general, each new claim moves the project forward, but also reorders past claims, altering meanings shisting focus on what is thought to be important."
As an echo to his three dimensional work, John Powers' collages are a two dimensional reflection on our perception of architecture. As there is no reference to any sort of scale, they can be read as models for utopian cities or organic systems that have reach a point of tension between implosion and explosion.
John Powers is an alumnus of both Pratt Institute and Hunter College (US). His works have been shown at Exit Art, PS1 (MOMA), the Kohler Arts Center and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
Maya Hewitt (English, born in 1981). Lives and works in London.
Maya Hewitt's fantastic world of colour and fantasy not only physically expands across vast wall spaces but spread itself throughout our imagination, much like a great animation that leaves us with a dazzled view of our surroundings. Appearing as spaces of connecting plots, each canvas links to the next taking on the idea of escapism as an occupation for the pursuit of happiness.
The extrapolations from everyday life are playfully manipulated and weaved into a fiction. Her process of painting builds and form a tale, taking constantly meandearing paths during each piece's creation.
Marcus Hansen (German, born in 1963). Lives and works in Paris.
A primary topic for Hansen is his critical thinking about German post war history ans the social, political and emotional implifications of the unspoken traumas passed on from generation to generation. The Dust piece of a curtain that hung in the cellar of the artists' grandmother in Germany and that as the child, he was convinced hid the family secrets. The image is revealed on the glass through a combination of dirt with silkscreen and varnish. It bear the underlying notion that German culture has been "polluted" by the Nazi era. It is a 'compromised' images, where positive and negative are reduced to the same value, where visibility is achieved by the use of a non material.
In 2004, following a solo show in New York, the curtain series entered the collection of the Guggenheim Museum.
Nathaniel Rackowe (English, born in 1975). Lives and works in London.
Nathaniel Rackowe, creates kinetic sculptures that traverse and 'read' the space in which they are housed. His devices scan, illuminate, conceal and track aspects of their environment, offering visually and conceptually rich effects prompting consideration of the ways in which space is organised and moved within. His engagement is with the built and industrial environment. Utilising aspects of Constructivist and Minimalist practices, Rackowe furthers such projects with the inclusion of materials that set in play alternative chains of recognition and association.
Rackowe studied fine-art sculpture in Sheffiield before doing his master's at the Slade in London. In 2002, he was selected for New Contemporaries during the Liverpool Biennal and shown later at the Barbican, London. He has been commissioned to create a major public sculpture at the new Cardinal Place development in Victoria, London for 2005.For futher press information and visuals please contact:
Paola Weiss, Bischoff/Weiss, 95 Rivington Street London EC2A 3AY
Phone: 44 77 66 058 256, Email: info@bischoffweiss.com
Ali Silverstein (Anglo-American, borm in 1980). Lives and works in London
"The practice of seeing a thing as if born that very moment (continuously) exposes the truth that nothing is self-contained; everything enters something else", Ali observes. "I started making the blind watercolours of still-lifes purely as a discipline, as a practice of viewing intimately and presently. Without aesthetic judgment or concern, without critical distance, without looking at the paper, I try to simply record what I see, to trace the being-there as I look."
"Making paintings grom gridded photographs is a differnt process with the same aim. The grid, first of all, abstracts the image into unnameable shapes and colours. I build the work more architecturally and methodically, like a poem. Choosing the shapes and colours like words to build the skin and skeleton of an image and hopefully to make something that questions its own stability and solidity. So pulled apart and separated, so transparent and deconstructed, can we still name it like a solid thing?"
Ali Silverstein graduated from Slade with an MA in 2005.
Benedetto Pietromarchi (Italien, born in 1972). Lives and works in London.
In the Assenti series Pietromarchi works on representing the realm of limbo in wich linger missing people. Neither fully present nor absent, each bust represents a person who disappeared. By partially obscuring the content of each box, Pietromarchi forces the onlooker to explore angles and perspectives in a attempt to catch a glimpse of the person inside. Only by creating distance between the piece and the viewer can the face be seen in full - up close, it completely disappears. In 1997, Benedetto Pietromarchi graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arte de Carrara (It.). In 2002, he also attended the workshop of Giulio Paolini thank to a prize he was awarded to go Fondazione Antonio Ratti of Como.
John Powers (American, born in 1970). Lives and works in Brooklyn.
"My sculpture uses a single repeated modular shape: blocks proportioned 1x2x3. While this shape remains constant, the size, materials, manufacture, color and assembly vary widely. Because the work is labor intensive I have ample time to consider why I' m doing. I think of an artistic project as an opportunity to build a visual rhetoric. My project is an argument made gradually, each separate project, linked by their common element - the block. Like a microcosm of art in general, each new claim moves the project forward, but also reorders past claims, altering meanings shisting focus on what is thought to be important."
As an echo to his three dimensional work, John Powers' collages are a two dimensional reflection on our perception of architecture. As there is no reference to any sort of scale, they can be read as models for utopian cities or organic systems that have reach a point of tension between implosion and explosion.
John Powers is an alumnus of both Pratt Institute and Hunter College (US). His works have been shown at Exit Art, PS1 (MOMA), the Kohler Arts Center and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
Maya Hewitt (English, born in 1981). Lives and works in London.
Maya Hewitt's fantastic world of colour and fantasy not only physically expands across vast wall spaces but spread itself throughout our imagination, much like a great animation that leaves us with a dazzled view of our surroundings. Appearing as spaces of connecting plots, each canvas links to the next taking on the idea of escapism as an occupation for the pursuit of happiness.
The extrapolations from everyday life are playfully manipulated and weaved into a fiction. Her process of painting builds and form a tale, taking constantly meandearing paths during each piece's creation.
Marcus Hansen (German, born in 1963). Lives and works in Paris.
A primary topic for Hansen is his critical thinking about German post war history ans the social, political and emotional implifications of the unspoken traumas passed on from generation to generation. The Dust piece of a curtain that hung in the cellar of the artists' grandmother in Germany and that as the child, he was convinced hid the family secrets. The image is revealed on the glass through a combination of dirt with silkscreen and varnish. It bear the underlying notion that German culture has been "polluted" by the Nazi era. It is a 'compromised' images, where positive and negative are reduced to the same value, where visibility is achieved by the use of a non material.
In 2004, following a solo show in New York, the curtain series entered the collection of the Guggenheim Museum.
Nathaniel Rackowe (English, born in 1975). Lives and works in London.
Nathaniel Rackowe, creates kinetic sculptures that traverse and 'read' the space in which they are housed. His devices scan, illuminate, conceal and track aspects of their environment, offering visually and conceptually rich effects prompting consideration of the ways in which space is organised and moved within. His engagement is with the built and industrial environment. Utilising aspects of Constructivist and Minimalist practices, Rackowe furthers such projects with the inclusion of materials that set in play alternative chains of recognition and association.
Rackowe studied fine-art sculpture in Sheffiield before doing his master's at the Slade in London. In 2002, he was selected for New Contemporaries during the Liverpool Biennal and shown later at the Barbican, London. He has been commissioned to create a major public sculpture at the new Cardinal Place development in Victoria, London for 2005.For futher press information and visuals please contact:
Paola Weiss, Bischoff/Weiss, 95 Rivington Street London EC2A 3AY
Phone: 44 77 66 058 256, Email: info@bischoffweiss.com