Left to my own devices
22.05. - 28.06.2008
Bernhard Knaus Fine Art is pleased to announce the first exhibition with Christian Hagemann and Noah Sherwood. Both artists have devolped a group of works that show the interplay between the common and different aspects in their work.
Christian Hagemann explores the pictorical qualities of photography. His works investigates the status of photography as a visual representational system that produces ambivalent aesthetic symbols. From the fund of art history, especially the still life genre and advertising photography, he takes different themes, forms and meanings and play with their conventions. In a recycling process the historic motifs are emptied out of their former content and compounded with signs and designs of contemporary visual culture. His work is an examination of established iconographies and visual formulas of the history of art and translates them into the present culture, so that there is a reverberation of the historic motif and meaning. His photographic works offer an contemplation on the photographic surface and appeal to colours, patterns and the material qualities of its subject. The banal and profane reality of the actual materials and their glorified position in his images irritate one another in their different readings.
Noah Sherwood: The works for this show continues in his interest in the transformation of objects and the use of the readymade as a way of describing movement and change in the immediate world. There is also a strong relationship to drawing in its broadest sense, from the use of the line, but also a drawing out of meaning and content. In deconstructing and reconstructing objects, he changes the material and structures of objects and fragments of daily use through a process of transition to create something very new, anarchic and organic. For example like the sculpture “Flip and Kiss”, that is built with welded chairs and topped with a found steel line that continue the swinging and vibrating form of the body.The curved steel line is applied with lipstick. By applying different lipstick each time the work is shown, it is as if it puts on make-up before show-time - very much a performing object, one that references expressionist sculpture and assemblage.
Whereas Christian Hagemann creates an intimate space, the sculptures by Noah Sherwood have a big dynamic and surreal dimension, expanding and stretching vividlys into the space. Both in common is the investigation and joy to experiment with surfaces, colour and material.
Christian Hagemann was born 1976 in Germany. He studied at the University of Essen, Germany with Prof. Bernhard Prinz. Among numerous awards he was granted with a scholarship by DAAD and studied an M.A. of Fine Art Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He lives and works in London.
Noah Sherwood, was born 1976 in Montréal, Canada. He studied an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. Amongst various international groupexhibition he was nominated for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize. He lives and works in London.
Christian Hagemann explores the pictorical qualities of photography. His works investigates the status of photography as a visual representational system that produces ambivalent aesthetic symbols. From the fund of art history, especially the still life genre and advertising photography, he takes different themes, forms and meanings and play with their conventions. In a recycling process the historic motifs are emptied out of their former content and compounded with signs and designs of contemporary visual culture. His work is an examination of established iconographies and visual formulas of the history of art and translates them into the present culture, so that there is a reverberation of the historic motif and meaning. His photographic works offer an contemplation on the photographic surface and appeal to colours, patterns and the material qualities of its subject. The banal and profane reality of the actual materials and their glorified position in his images irritate one another in their different readings.
Noah Sherwood: The works for this show continues in his interest in the transformation of objects and the use of the readymade as a way of describing movement and change in the immediate world. There is also a strong relationship to drawing in its broadest sense, from the use of the line, but also a drawing out of meaning and content. In deconstructing and reconstructing objects, he changes the material and structures of objects and fragments of daily use through a process of transition to create something very new, anarchic and organic. For example like the sculpture “Flip and Kiss”, that is built with welded chairs and topped with a found steel line that continue the swinging and vibrating form of the body.The curved steel line is applied with lipstick. By applying different lipstick each time the work is shown, it is as if it puts on make-up before show-time - very much a performing object, one that references expressionist sculpture and assemblage.
Whereas Christian Hagemann creates an intimate space, the sculptures by Noah Sherwood have a big dynamic and surreal dimension, expanding and stretching vividlys into the space. Both in common is the investigation and joy to experiment with surfaces, colour and material.
Christian Hagemann was born 1976 in Germany. He studied at the University of Essen, Germany with Prof. Bernhard Prinz. Among numerous awards he was granted with a scholarship by DAAD and studied an M.A. of Fine Art Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He lives and works in London.
Noah Sherwood, was born 1976 in Montréal, Canada. He studied an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. Amongst various international groupexhibition he was nominated for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize. He lives and works in London.
