letter from Gerard Kodde (Berlin, 15 February 2008)

 

Dear Justin,

 

I can’t remember receiving a reply on my documentation that is as extensive as the one you’ve sent me. Thankyou so much once again. You’ve really done a lot of writing and thinking on my work and you’ve come to a point that asks for more thinking. From my side, only short answers have come so far, even though you’ve offered me a large amount of material in images and text on cd-r. Your documentation is on my hard disk now. I have a look at it every now and then when it comes into my mind. That’s how I work towards a response. Indeed, as you’re saying, writing in sections is a good help.

 

Looking at your work, speaking of the sculptural pieces, I can’t ignore the words I remember you saying in Bonn, that you love cutting through the material. The results of this cutting are sharp edged scraps, being so crisp it brings in mind the thought of an unknown, new typography. The viewer is reading ´words` which are cut outs from the material they are referring to and by result there’s almost no distance between what these words say and their origin. The two-dimensional work is strongly related to what is made visible in the sculptural works. Again I’m thinking of a kind of writing. The word as a new appearance after material breaks out from being locked up in itself, flocking with other words and finding a position in space were they do exist for a while as a cloud, a body, a structure that surrounds us.

 

Going through your documentation, it is a surprise to arrive at the part showing works that are partly built up with wrapping material, carrying graphic prints. Printed words of the real world, cut into pieces and spread out in space to be language again. I imagine you working, destroying those printed words, whatever they may have said, submitting them to a different appearance. Although the shredding of the existing world into a million pieces could easily provide an expression of violence, it is completely clear Justin how carefully you operate in this working process. No doubt you’ll have the help of tools and some skills of craftsmanship, but in a strange contradiction you actually seem to be a bystander also, observing and analyzing a crystallizing process that’s bringing forth a newly defined environment, which offers a physical space (and therefore a mental space) to those who are curious to find shelter in it.

 

The spectator, me beside others, is not pushed to step into the spaces created here. Together with you, one is permitted to be a bystander. Or by-passer, like a truck driver who’s noticing your work on the facade of a building, perhaps picking up it’s positive energy, and continuing his own way. That’s what I really do appreciate here, namely that it is left completely open as to ones extent of involvement - either just ending at the surface of the shiny elements, or walking deeper into those structures. As an artist you are working on a high level, and you’ve found a very consistent path to walk along. There is, as I see it, a great potential for coming developments and I´m wondering which objects will be worth next putting in ´the shredder machine´.

 

Saying your work reminds me of linguistics has maybe a connection to your background in philosophy, a part of your past I read about in your c.v. It is perhaps an explanation of the clarity in your description of my activities in painting. It’s true I’ve done a lot of thinking on the matter, although I have tried to ‘ignore’ painting. I’m recognizing it is tricky to have a goal on painting itself, instead of using painting as one possible medium between others. For me architecture or photography for instance would be alright also. The thing is, I like the medium of painting for conveying new ways of thinking, because a canvas is almost as easy to handle as a piece of paper. Reality is always the same, the mind has a need for change. The canvas is giving way to this.

 

Our practices basically start with concept and opinion, making and renewing opinion, otherwise there would be little reason to give the work a place in the public domain. It is my turn to apologize, knowing my words do not reach quite far and they also carry a risk of being misunderstood because of the language difficulty. I hope you will find some good thoughts to share, though. Sorry I haven’t made it yet to start answering your final question, but a next opportunity might come?

 

For now all the best, with my kind regards,

Gerard 

 

 

 

ABSTRACTION ARCHITECTURE SPACE 
Justin Andrews

ABSTRACTION ARCHITECTURE SPACE suggests that the attention of geometric abstraction has emerged from the rarefied picture frame of the museum, and into the active public space of the wider world.

The rectilinear elements of architecture and space continue to be reference points for geometric abstraction. Geometric abstraction maintains the ability to signify a multiplicity of experiences within the urban environment. It recognises the urban environment as a dynamic locus for cultural interface. As a diverse form of visual abbreviation, it references the complexity of public space. It is an artform that continues to invite public viewing and interaction.

International and inter-generational positions within it record diverse perceptions of contemporary life. Contemporary geometric abstraction is an area of investigation that is not bound by national borders. Melbourne houses a number of its most important Australian practitioners. Melbourne hosts international visitation, exhibition, and discussion.

ABSTRACTION ARCHITECTURE SPACE is an exhibition that proposes the ongoing diversity and strength and relevance of geometric abstraction. It proposes that artists working in geometric abstraction today are more observational than ever before. Through shifts in spatial manipulation, and in the fundamental recognition of what architectural space is held to mean, contemporary geometric abstraction conceives space as physical and as a centre for dynamic cultural activity.

The majority of ‘visual text’ used within the vocabulary of geometric abstraction is derived from very reduced elements of space – either within architecture or surrounding it. Geometric abstraction has been able to constantly ‘update’ its repository of graphic devices, so that it maintains its own currency in a world so dependant upon visual imagery for communication.

ABSTRACTION ARCHITECTURE SPACE highlights a growing movement towards the de-classification of geometric abstraction, a deconstruction of the picture plane, and thereby its own historic formal systems. The effects of a prevailing desire to reinterpret space can also be seen within contemporary geometric abstraction. This deliberately represented space ranges from the modern, square, and flat planes of the monochrome, moving right through to the fractured rectangle, the geometrically organic, the perceptually interactive, even detailed to the point of expression.

This new and mostly unaccounted tendency towards fractured space can be best illustrated by presenting a range of artwork which spans a number of decades. ABSTRACTION ARCHITECTURE SPACE will illustrate this diversification of the modern, historical self-referential model by presenting artworks that suggest a dynamic shift in pictorial organization. This deconstruction of plane and form could be seen as a continuation of the desire to represent space in non-objective terms. It is also a practice of pointing towards an increasingly diverse, eclectic, and quotational culture.

Justin Andrews