Matt Calderwood Stephan Gripp Sarah Staton

Pick your Poison!

When I thought about a new group of paintings using denim I came across a catalogue of Sarah Staton´s work and I saw that she had already done what I had in mind. Two of her paintings are included in the show alongside new sculptural works by Berlin based artist Stephan Gripp and new video works by London based artist Matt Calderwood.

Next to the denim images of Sarah Staton, that comment on industrialized culture ("The Masses are Massive", 140x 220cm, 1999), Stephan Gripp shows new three dimensional works that refer to furniture design of the 1980s with its black and silver, leather and steel looks. The association with cold interiors and nerve wrecking combinations of materials evolve into newborn icons of irony. His sculptures like "Traumaland1" 2006 with its neon light, chains and mirror get close to functional yet uncomfortable furniture.

Matt Calderwood's videos are documentations of physical boundaries as well as artistic performances. He uses video to document his performative interventions.These works come close to the physically impossible; everytime the viewer gets to see the action recorded on film, he will have to acknowledge the visible as a performed fact. In Calderwood's recent works light became the central subject. "Vertical Strips" (2005) for instance documents the loss of light when a bright group of neon tubes is being shot at and destroyed one by one until the screen turns black.

All the works in the show remind us of traditional artistic expressions like painting, sculpting and filming, yet these three artists circumnavigate the boredom of tradition. In their works they create hybrids that relate and combine yet avoid the routine of "One Eyed Art" which has become so convenient to look at.


Cornelius Quabeck 2006