Nina Gehl - Displacement
17 Mar - 6 May 2006
Bischoff/Weiss is pleased to announce the opening of 'displacement',
an exhibition of a new body of works by American painter Nina Gehl.
Displacement is defined as 'the transfer of emotions from the objects
that originally evoked them to a substitute.' In her new body of work,
Gehl explores this theme on both a physical and psychological level.
The paintings depict a world uninhabited, where absence takes on a
presence and objects replace human figures. By referencing her own
photographs from the past, Gehl creates strangely familiar settings,
portraying a world we all leave behind.
Within the paintings there is an obvious, deliberate - and, at times,
seemingly aggressive removal of figures, which she has painted and
then painted over, or rubbed out, leaving substitutes: curtain, carpets,
beds, sofas, chairs, windows, tables. Objects are left frozen, embedded
in nothingness, like a homage to things left behind. The boundary of a
lonely backyard is denoted by a clothesline where a women's
underwear is caught in a breeze; the side of a clapboard house is
disturbed by a tensely protruding hose; and on an empty dinner table,
a withering bunch of geraniums punctuates a blackened windowpane.
The singular composition and severe cropping give the paintings a filmic
quality; angles are deliberately made awkward, views are intentionnally
obscured. These are stolen glimpses, as if an entire house was
dissected, rearranged and reinterpreted - as if remembering or revisiting
a far off place. Layers, washes, and scrubbings of turpentine-thinned
paint, an austere palette of ochres, umbers, and greys, all serve to give
precedence to the surfaves of these large canvasses.
The deadening of light and colour and a persistant repetition of imagery
suggest something disrupted or something lost. With extraneous drips
and dribbles of paint spilling over surfaces of doors, floors and walls, the
pictures veer towards abstraction, an appropriate allegory for the nature
of repressed memories.
Nina Gehl, born in Buffalo, New York, completed her undergraduate
studies in America, including the NY Academy of Figurative Art and also
took part in a two-month residency in Hungary. She graduated from
Byam Shaw in 2005 and now resides in London.
For further press information please call 0207 033 0309, or email
info@bischoffweiss.com
Open Wednesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm and by appointment.
an exhibition of a new body of works by American painter Nina Gehl.
Displacement is defined as 'the transfer of emotions from the objects
that originally evoked them to a substitute.' In her new body of work,
Gehl explores this theme on both a physical and psychological level.
The paintings depict a world uninhabited, where absence takes on a
presence and objects replace human figures. By referencing her own
photographs from the past, Gehl creates strangely familiar settings,
portraying a world we all leave behind.
Within the paintings there is an obvious, deliberate - and, at times,
seemingly aggressive removal of figures, which she has painted and
then painted over, or rubbed out, leaving substitutes: curtain, carpets,
beds, sofas, chairs, windows, tables. Objects are left frozen, embedded
in nothingness, like a homage to things left behind. The boundary of a
lonely backyard is denoted by a clothesline where a women's
underwear is caught in a breeze; the side of a clapboard house is
disturbed by a tensely protruding hose; and on an empty dinner table,
a withering bunch of geraniums punctuates a blackened windowpane.
The singular composition and severe cropping give the paintings a filmic
quality; angles are deliberately made awkward, views are intentionnally
obscured. These are stolen glimpses, as if an entire house was
dissected, rearranged and reinterpreted - as if remembering or revisiting
a far off place. Layers, washes, and scrubbings of turpentine-thinned
paint, an austere palette of ochres, umbers, and greys, all serve to give
precedence to the surfaves of these large canvasses.
The deadening of light and colour and a persistant repetition of imagery
suggest something disrupted or something lost. With extraneous drips
and dribbles of paint spilling over surfaces of doors, floors and walls, the
pictures veer towards abstraction, an appropriate allegory for the nature
of repressed memories.
Nina Gehl, born in Buffalo, New York, completed her undergraduate
studies in America, including the NY Academy of Figurative Art and also
took part in a two-month residency in Hungary. She graduated from
Byam Shaw in 2005 and now resides in London.
For further press information please call 0207 033 0309, or email
info@bischoffweiss.com
Open Wednesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm and by appointment.