Asgar/Gabriel

Asgar/Gabriel
Auflösung der Ökonomie
Until 13 March 2011

Opening:
30 January 2011, 11 am
The artist-duo will be present.

Mannheimer Kunstverein
Augustaanlage 58
68165 Mannheim Germany
www.mannheimer-kunstverein.de

Asgar/Gabriel are masters of confusion with allusions to art history, visual mystifications and overall terrific painting. Remarkably, the typical male dominance which is prevalent in most paintings is broken due to the fact that almost exclusively women are portrayed. The future is female. A realistic painting that nevertheless does not come off as photo-realistic, makes connections to graffiti elements and traces of trickling colour on canvas. Everything is painted however, not sprayed. Asgar/Gabriel have set out to radically renew the art of painting without denying its history. They avail themselves of the art and history of painting in order take large monumental strides forward. Who would have thought that so much power, intelligence and deceitful jokes would be hidden in the medium of the painting? The forethought of societal development that is in the day and age a topic of much reflection, was always a theme in the world of art whereby art has almost always been one step ahead of reality. An update of the genre in this sense is long since overdue. (Translated excerpt from Martin Stather)

Referring to various influences, Asgar/Gabriel’s lavish designed scenarios are more reminiscent of battle scenes rather than compositions. Their protagonists navigate through unstable worlds from oblique perspectives and changing time-horizons.

Their picture-iconography is consistently contemporary. They portray people from their generation, adorning the pictures with subjects from pop-culture to inflatable plastic palm trees. Similarly, the settings and the subject matter are mirror images of youth-culture: orgiastic parties without any taboos. This painting may seem current at first glance, made up entirely of content and themes of the present, but they still reveal their typological and compositional reference fields in the history of painting itself. Thus the lascivious hedonistic house party emerges as a bacchanal, cascading from octopuses entangled around groups of figures as a fall from hell. (In den Fängen des rotten Oktopus, 2009). (Translated excerpt from Florian Steininger)

A variety of recent works by the artist-duo will be on display at the Mannheimer Kunstverein.

The artist-duo is represented by the Hilger modern/contemporary in Vienna (www.hilger.at).

Daryoush ASGAR was born in 1975 in Tehran and Elisabeth GABRIEL was born in 1974 in Vienna
Both studied Art and Philosophy.
The artist-duo has been working together since 2005.
They live and work in Vienna.

*Image above:
Courtesy of Hilger modern/contemporary, Vienna, www.hilger.at.