Gabriel Hartley, Splays
and
Roman Liška, Gemini
March 21–May 11, 2013
Opening: March 21, 7–9pm
Brand New Gallery
Via Carlo Farini, 32
20159 Milan, Italy
Gabriel Hartley, Splays
Brand New Gallery is proud to present Splays, Gabriel Hartley’s solo show.
Splays refers to the idea of the spreading out and expansion of body parts. The concise titles chosen by Gabriel Hartley for his works allude to the possible interpretations of his pieces, only apparently consigned to an abstract existence, for the simple spontaneity with which they become associable to the physical surrounding environment which, however, seizes the surreal references. This title manifests and justifies the artist’s choice to literally display his works on the tablecloth like prints, laid out as if they were splayed on the scanner.
The exhibition is presented as an elaborate project, composed by canvases and sculptures conceived through a tight dialogue amongst the different components. Hartley’s works evoke identifiable forms and, in the same way, embrace features of abstractism.
Hartley produces his works expressing himself through a strong and linear gestuality, that plays with space, restituting flat but at the same time thick surfaces. The artist adopts a sculptural procedure also in his canvases, using a spray paint finishing that operates on the thick substrate of oil paint, weakening but at the same time reinforcing it. This process confers his paintings a distilled light adept to hide and reveal, staging the illusion of making the painted canvases look like printed ones. The monumental colored paper sculpture whose measures are inversely proportional to the lightness of the chosen material wraps up the artist’s imaginary trip, who consciously accompanies the spectator in a crumpled dimension.
Roman Liška, Gemini
Brand New Gallery is proud to present Gemini, Roman Liška’s first personal exhibition in Italy. Conceived as a series of strategic twinnings, the show investigates on the notion of singularity.
Gemini implies a multiplicity of references that range from the most literal meaning of the term to the association of metaphorical notions, freely inspired by the reading of David Batchelor’s Chromophobia and tied to the astrological interpretations relative to the intrinsic contradictions of this sign of the zodiac. According to Greek mythology, Dioscuri achieved their immortality in an individual way; Castor as a demigod, Pollux as a mortal, giving form to the constellation of the Gemini. The duality expressed in this myth is the fil rouge of the artist’s analysis, constituted by the repetition of pairs of works treated individually as an assembly of two pieces, akin for chromium and surface.
Liška embraces iconoclasm, reminiscing the dictators’ deteriorated sculptures, which have been demolished together with their respective regimes, whilst the non conventional disposition of monochrome panels and of their alter ego‘s on the walls, qualifies the exhibition space as a mere repository of objects, dropped in this conventional place in a transitory phase of existence. Through the geometric juxtaposition of black and white blocks, dominated by the textures that break through the immaculate surfaces, the artist drives his public in the minefield of the possible and potential. The installation process is minutely studied and the pattern, borrowed from the artist’s motif, which conceals the gallery’s pavements together with the monitor that projects a hyper-real macro vision of the show itself, acts as disturbed perceptive channels that restitute a distorted vision of reality, shifting the public’s assumptions, subject to a passive and captivating perception of the surrounding environment.
