NEW SPACE, THREE LEVELS, THREE EXHIBITIONS
1st floor: MILTOS MANETAS, JONATHAN MONK, RICHARD WOODS
Ground floor: CHRISTOF MASCHER “drift wood chris”
Basement: DIMITRA VAMIALI “Labretta soundtrap", with music compilation by VOYAGER & ALFONSO
18 February - 16 April 2011
vamiali's gallery inaugurates its new space with three different exhibitions. On the ground floor, young German artist Christof Mascher has his first solo exhibition in Athens, titled “drift wood chris”. On the first floor, works by Miltos Manetas, Jonathan Monk and Richard Woods are on display. In the basement, Dimitra Vamiali presents a new installation with music compilation by Voyager & Alfonso.
On the ground floor, Christof Mascher presents new works on wood and paper, in various dimensions. Mascher’s visual language has density, with lots of information and references, but “airy” and “ethereal”, covering a long way of influences. In his scenarios, we recognize elements from Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Breughel and Edvard Munch, Phillip Guston and Per Kirkeby, even from earlier works by Jonathan Borofsky. In Mascher’s use of repetitive architectural motifs we meet highlights from the 80's adventure games, old cartoons, expressionist silent films and East German DEFA films from the 70s. Influenced by his active experience in the hip-hop scene during the '90s, his paintings are associative and collage like. Mascher’s paintings and drawings are characterized by contradictions and unexpected interruptions, breaks, according to the music terminology. Implications and gestures coexist with decorative and abstract elements and representations where influences from art and popular culture are equally used. Landscape’s “leftovers” are "essential" and "ghostlike" where architecture is often "under construction" or already in decline. In the visual world of Mascher meaning is not that important, the iconographic elements are dissolved, leaving all the options open to possibilities. Apart from canvas and paper, Mascher uses unusual surfaces such as old Formica, copper plates and found woods. His sizes range from miniatures to large-scale works where the final surface is both dull and almost transparent or has a thick coating of varnish shellac. Christof Mascher was born in 1979 in Hanover and studied at the University of Braunschweig.
On the first floor, Miltos Manetas presents a series of digitally processed large-scale drawings, mounted in Plexiglas. The drawings, portraits of women who passed from his life, are created with rather fast fine lines and fluidity, recording the memory in a contemporary visual vocabulary. Richard Woods merges the boundaries among art, design and architecture. He participates with his characteristic two-dimensional works on wood using the technique of marquetry. Woods' fragments from his known printed patterns for floors, are pasted on a new wood surface creating structures like virtual cartoonish explosions. Jonathan Monk’s work, entitled "Peanuts", is an enlarged photo of a 50s model where a René Magritte-like hat is hung to cover her naked body. The work entitled "Something made from something discarded IV" is a neon light tubing made out in the shape of a wasted piece of paper.
In the basement, Dimitra Vamiali creates a site-specific installation with a vintage vespa, titled “Labretta soundtrap”, in a semi-dark environment with music compilation by invited guests Voyager & Alfonso, in an attempt to explore the notions of loss and time.
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Christof Mascher, "drift wood chris", installation view
Miltos Manetas , "Mai Ueda", "Madeleine von Froomer", print on aluminium and mounted on plexiglass, 130x155cm each, 2004
Miltos Manetas , "Vanessa Beecroft", "Chinese Girl", print on aluminium and mounted on plexiglass, 130x155cm each, 2004
Jonathan Monk and Miltos Manetas, installation view
Jonathan Monk, "Peanuts", photograph on wood with real hat, 50x72cm, 2010, (left), "Something made from something discarded IV", neon light, 52x29cm approx., 2009, (right)
Richard Woods , "Off Cut Inlay", household gloss pain on MDF with plywood, 122x90cm, 2010
Dimitra Vamiali, "Labretta Soundtrap ", installation with sound, real Vespa, lights, photographs, 2011
Dimitra Vamiali, "Labretta Soundtrap ", photographs, 20x30cm each, framed, 2011