all images from the exhibition "Ulrich Pester, Ralph Schuster, Anna Virnich" at Sprüth Magers Berlin / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London / photos by artfridge.de
What do we actually mean, when we talk about the contemporary in art? Originally, the word "contemporary" describes a state that only takes some milli-seconds. A blink with the eye. However, the word is commonly used to define certain art as 'right in time' - now. And still, whether something is contemporary, whether it is a new trend or not, is usually dependent on the peoples' common opinion. Galerie Sprüth Magers Berlin currently hosts three exhibitions, which all fall into the category of being "contemporary": Upstairs, Joseph Kosuth reanimates the cold aestehtic of neon signs and thus re-establishes the old contemporary; the main room shows several 3D music videos by Kraftwerk, who are contemporary evergreens; and in the project room there is an excting group show with the three young artists Ulrich Pester, Ralph Schuster and Anna Virnich - let's say, the new contemporaries.
Pester, Schuster and Virnich are former students of Walter Dahn at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig. Anna Virnich, who I interviewed last year (-> read it here), mostly works with textile installations and photography. The exhibition features several beautiful large format wall pieces of her, which are not only striking because of their delicate creation, but also because they repeatedly play with soft- and harsness. Silk meets leather, dirty black meets transparent white, strains and rips meet loosely suspended panels. The tension is subliminal and yet always present.
Ralph Schuster puts an emphasis on colour compositions: His palette is based on strong reds and blues. The small paintings often have varying formats, while his "Untitled" globe - a wooden ball with matt colours - exceeds the limits of the two dimensionality. Schuster also works with video and shows some poetically shot mood-short films on a small television. In this exhibition, both men are noticeably chary: Also Ulrich Pester chose very small formats for his figurative paintings, however not failing to attract attention. He creates parallel worlds – employs shapes that seem familiar and are yet alienated from their original source. Also Pester frees the paintings from their two dimensionality: By using a trompe-l'oeil effect, he turns painted patterns, such as the grid, into a seemingly tangible object.
The movement of detaching the two dimensional from its original strains is an apparent strategy that all three artists use. Its not a shock, its not even intrusive. Rather the opposite: its subtle. Little steps towards what we may call "the new contemporaries".
URLICH PESTER, RALPH SCHUSTER, ANNA VIRNICH
05. July - 31. August 2013
Oranienburger Strasse 18
10178 Berlin
all images from the exhibition "Ulrich Pester, Ralph Schuster, Anna Virnich" at Sprüth Magers Berlin / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London / photos by artfridge.de