Jan Merta, Donelle Woolford:
Wite Trash

Jan Merta

Eröffnung: Donnerstag, 10. Juni 2010, 19 Uhr
Dauer der Ausstellung: 11.06. – 31.07.2010

Die Galerie Martin Janda zeigt vom 11. Juni bis 31. Juli 2010 neue Werke von Jan Merta und die erste Einzelausstellung von Donelle Woolford.

Jan Merta zählt zu den wichtigsten zeitgenössischen Künstlern Tschechiens. Merta arbeitet mit klassischen Bildmotiven: Er zeigt alltägliche Objekte, dem Alltag entnommene Bildmotive, die er malerisch und inhaltlich transformiert, abstrahiert und deren ursprüngliche Bedeutung er immer wieder entfernt. Mertas Malerei bleibt dabei immer zurückhaltend. Durch kleine Gesten, malerische Details und oft humorvolle Bildtitel lädt er die erkennbaren Dinge mit einer komplexen Inhaltlichkeit auf. Der Künstler bearbeitet einzelne Themen immer wieder, unter dem gleichen Bildtitel entstehen oft zahlreiche Variationen. Die Unterschiede sind meist klein, aber inhaltlich bedeutend: „Ich verwende Variationen, um dem Thema näher zu kommen.“ (Jan Merta).
„Merta builds each painting as a completely independent entity and its subject matter, composition, meaning and execution aspire to send a special message, to build a universe of its own. The artist does not strive to create a ‘style’ that will encompass the totality of the world and become a cipher of the universe in a modernistic (or romantic) spirit, rather he works within an originality which, at any one moment, commands a specific approach and effect.” (Marek Pokorný)
Jan Merta, geboren 1952 in Sumperk, lebt und arbeitet in Prag und České Lhotice.

Donelle Woolford: Wite Trash

Eröffnung: Donnerstag, 10. Juni 2010, 19 Uhr
Dauer der Ausstellung: 11.06. – 31.07.2010

Galerie Martin Janda is pleased to present an exhibition by New York-based artist Donelle Woolford. This will be her first show at the gallery. Through her work, Donelle Woolford investigates myth and the process by which fictional characters and story lines enter the public imagination and, through their circulation and discourse, become real.
Donelle Woolford’s new paintings revolve around two unrelated cultural phenomena, both having to do with degradation and the color white. The first is the so-called “end of painting” that occurred in Europe and America in the 1960s and 70s. Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings aside, this historical moment was predominantly “white” both in terms of the images that were produced by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, Roman Opalka, Jo Baer, and Robert Ryman and in the racial makeup of these artists themselves. The second phenomenon, one both more personal and remote, is the fact that Ms. Woolford grew up in the American South and is thus well accustomed to the cultural habits of rural Caucasian southerners, often pejoratively referred to as “white trash.”
As such, this show marks the very beginning of Ms. Woolford’s investigation into whether there might be a relationship — however speculative or farfetched — between the sparse endgame economy of late-Modernist painting and the desperate socio-economics of working class whites. This latter desperation has recently manifested itself as the so-called “Tea Party” movement in the United States, in which long-simmering race and class resentments have boiled over into virulent public displays of veiled threats, overt racism, and often humorously misspelled protest signs.

Donelle Woolford was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1977. She has had one-person shows at Wallspace, New York, Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris; Galerie de Expeditie, Amsterdam; and Artissima, Torino. She also has participated in the 8th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, Double Agent at the ICA, London, and Paper Exhibition at Artists Space, New York. In June she published her “Plot Structure and Character Development” in La Copia, Lo Falso (Y El Originial), XV Jornadas De Estudio de la Imagen de la Comunidad de Madrid, Spain. She lives in New York City.