Alan Uglow
Sept 15-Oct 22,2006
CCNOA
Center for Contemporary
Non-Objective Art
Boulevard Barthélémylaan 5
1000 Brussels, Belgium
T F: (32) (0)2 502 6912
E: info [at] ccnoa.org
W: www.ccnoa.org
The Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art (CCNOA) is pleased to present an exhibition by British-born, New York-based artist Alan Uglow. A series of recent photo silk-screens and a freestanding painting continue Uglows practice of isolating and abstracting elements from a primary context and representing them through analogous forms.
While best known for monochromatic paintings concerned with the edge and the literal frame of the picture-support, Uglows body of work also includes photography and site-specific installations. Along with an emphasis on structure, materiality, and the reducing of forms to their constituent elements, his diverse artistic practice is marked by a lifelong fascination with the game of football. The spatial arrangement of the football pitch is partly the source for the rectangular, bisected fields in his Standard paintings, for example–a syntactical similarity present in his work since the late 60s.
Uglows recent work continues this connection through forms drawn from stadium architecture and re-presented through a rigorous process of abstraction. A photograph of a tunnel from the Müngersdorfer Stadion in Cologne (Germany), which players use to enter and leave the pitch, is turned into a site-specific photo-silkscreen. Uglow subjects this image of a functional, built structure to a myriad of painterly choices about color, flatness, and tonality, turning it into a minimal still-film.
Similarly, Uglow turns a Goal Wall, an object used by footballers for shooting practice into a freestanding painting, the aluminum panel is stabilized with metal supports behind the panel. Toward the top left corner and the lower right corner two circles, slightly larger than a football have been cut out, this emphasizes the built quality of the painting an aspect of Uglows best-known Standard paintings. In both cases, as in the bulk of Uglows work, the emphasis on framing and materiality highlights the objects relationship to a context beyond its purely formal boundaries.
Alan Uglow was born in Luton, England, in 1941. His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and North America, as well as in group shows worldwide. He has lived and worked in New York City since 1969.
In addition to Uglows exhibition in the main gallery, we present the new site-specific audio installation The Thickness of Air by Belgian composer Johan Vandermaelen in the entrance of CCNOA.
Since its inception in 1998, CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art, a multidisciplinary, nonprofit organization located in the city centre of Brussels, has focused on the presentation, promotion, and dissemination of a broad range of international identities, concepts and practices in the field of contemporary abstract art, notably in the areas of visual art, multimedia and publications. CCNOA attracts European and international artists and art professionals to Brussels, provides a platform for emerging as well as established artists from Belgium and elsewhere, and facilitates their introduction to other European countries and the rest of the world by organizing traveling exhibitions and exchanges with art galleries, art centers and museums worldwide.
CCNOA and the above mentioned exhibitions have received funding from the Flemish Ministry of Culture Belgium, the Flemish Community Commission, the City of Brussels, the CCNOA Friends and Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam.
For additional information please contact: CCNOA (32) (0)2 502 6912 or info@ccnoa.org
