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Frictions
Anders RuhwaldNew Work
Lauren Feece - Project Room
December 9 - January 28, 2006
Opening reception Friday, December 9, 2005, 6-9pm
CHICAGO, IL -- rowlandcontemporary is excited to present Frictions by Anders Ruhwald. In his first solo exhibition in the United States, Ruhwald presents a series of new sculptures comprised from a body of work he created while in residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center's Arts/Industry Program in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. In the Project Room will be a series of paintings by Chicago based artist Lauren Feece, her first exhibition with the gallery.
Frictions
Frictions is a series of sculptures that exploit the nature of objects to address cultural notions of economy, domesticity and design. The audience observes these works through a mediated position of viewing brought on by our own histories. Anders Ruhwald subverts that history, augmenting it with new meaning.
On first inspection, Oil and Gold, a set of architectural-like fragments are displayed as highly collectible objects for the home. Our domestic lives enriched by the implied history of our own making. Our notion of history and design becomes challenged after it is revealed that the profile of these objects are derived from the price of gold and oil, recorded over a one month period during the time of the recent Hurricane Katrina devastation.
Ruhwald also attempts to alter the perception of space by creating a tension between the viewer and the object. With You and It #2, three fiberglass markers, normally used as a warning device, tenuously support a fragile amorphous object resting on top. What might normally be displayed as an object to be admired becomes an object whose safety is threatened by those who admire it.
Anders Ruhwald has been widely recognized in Europe as among the next generation of up and coming ceramists. Ruhwald's skills are formidable, transforming the traditional use of ceramics from everyday objects, to comments on everyday life. Questioning our perception of the familiar, he addresses the materiality implicit in everyday domestic designs.
Anders Ruhwald was born in Denmark and currently resides in London. He received his MA from The Royal College of Art in London. His work has been shown in Berlin, Prague, Reykjavik, Budapest, Glasgow, Milan, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Stockholm, Toronto, and Brussels, as well as Taiwan and Korea, and is in several public and private European collections. In 2002 he received The Biennial Prize from the Danish Craft and Design Biennial. Ruhwald has also received grants from the Annie and Otto Detlefs Foundation and the Danish Art Foundation.
Project Room
Lauren Feece challenges the viewer to see beyond the photograph into our overloaded and over stimulated media-frenzied world. Her latest collection of paintings exploit the snapshot aesthetic inherently captured by the amateur photographer. Working with both found and personal photographs, Feece digitally manipulates the images to arrive at an effect that makes them at once more graphic and sparse, until the figures lose their individual identity becoming shapes and empty space.
We view her work through imagined histories. In New Street, four young women stand in an urban setting dressed in what could be their Sunday best, or wedding outfits, or even a prom. Painted with tones of pinks and deep browns, (not to mention the style of dress), it seems as if the setting is 1950's America. Moments like these are often awkward and certainly posed. Here they take on new meaning as even their cultural significance is in question: are these women Caucasian or African American? Does this painting represent a significant moment? Feece has so eradicated the details that we question what is real.
Extending the notion of photography by supplanting the photographer's eye with the painters, Feece states, "If the snapshot gives us the reality of what we see, the concrete, than the painting that filters reality, must be quicksand."
Lauren Feece lives and works in Chicago. She received her BFA from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She has recently exhibited in Chicago at Lobby Gallery, Around the Coyote Space, ARC Gallery, Hock Shop Gallery, and Unit B Gallery.
