Adriana Czernin, Selbstportrait II, 2018

Adriana Czernins lebt und arbeitet seit Jahrzehnten in Wien, der Hauptstadt des Fin de Siècle und der opulenten Ornamentik des Jugendstils. So gleichen auch Czernins frühere Arbeiten mit nackten Frauenkörpern, floralen Mustern und verschachtelten Ornamenten Reisen in die Tiefen der österreichischen Moderne. Doch seit Langem hat Czernin ihre Formensprache reduziert und geometrisiert. Dabei hat sie sich für eine ganze Serie von einer Arbeit des Wiener Museums für angewandte Kunst inspirieren lassen: einem Tableau mit Holzornamenten aus der Kanzel der Ibn-Tulun-Moschee in Kairo von 1296. War zuvor der weibliche Körper ins Ornament verstrickt, steht hier das Ornament als Metapher für gesellschaftliche und persönliche Verstrickungen. Die Strenge der Symmetrie des über 700 Jahre alten Werkes durchbricht Czernin. Sie entfernt Ornamentteile und schafft eine dynamische Komposition scheinbar freier Formen, die sich über den Bildraum [...]

Wasted Mud (2021). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2021. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate

Chisenhale Gallery presents Wasted Mud, the first solo exhibition in a UK institution by Shanghai-based artist Yu Ji. Comprising sculpture, video, print and performance, Yu Ji’s work often responds to a specific context or location to examine the interplay between the human body and its surrounding space.

Motivated by an acute sensitivity to materials, Yu Ji’s work explores a tension between physical matter and energy. Recurring materials used in her work, such as cement, wood, metal, plastic and organic matter all have their distinctive characteristics, tactility and ‘temperatures’. In her installations, these materials oppose, rub and strike against one another; proposing by their proximity how they might merge, combine or absorb one into the other.

Influenced by research conducted during a residency at our exhibition partners Delfina Foundation, in 2019, Yu Ji’s new commission sees London as a site to explore the body in [...]

Yu Ji, Spontaneous Decisions II, Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project, 2021

After “Remain Calm”, the project by Nile Koetting presented in 2019-2020, Gallery 0 is hosting Shanghai based artist Yu Ji, whose artistic research over the past ten years has focused on the work of time in the face of the rapidly changing urban world. Her work evokes sculpture as a perpetual project in which mass, texture, materials and form compose a temporary landscape. Working in situ using each specific location and context, she creates a liminal space between two worlds, a sensitive field to host opposing forces and produce fertile accidents.

Yu Ji’s practice is based on the techniques of sculpture, a traditional medium that she reinterprets through installations, performance and video. The duration and manual transformation of materials are central to her work. Her Flesh in Stone series, begun in 2012, places particular importance on the sculptural process and relates to the principle of imprint through the direct contact between the object and its [...]

Nilbar Güres, Under the Skin, 2019

Upon invitation from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in the framework of Ulay Was Here (21.11.2020 – 30.05.2021), de Appel presents:

Here is Ulay with

Georgia Sagri (20.11.2020 – 18.01.2021)
Pierre Bal-Blanc ft. Nilbar Güreş a.o. (19.01. – 30.05.2021)
Lotte Reimann (02.03. – 30.05.2021)

Working at the intersection of curatorial and artistic practice, Pierre Bal-Blanc proposes Le Salon Turc, a ‘conversation score’, written in response to Ulay’s own notation of his 1976 action Irritation: there is a Criminal Touch to Art. By reading the conversation score as it appears right below this text, viewers can find out more about the sculptural contribution of artist Nilbar Güreş as well as the selection of a painting from the Stedelijk’s collection by Jean Brusselmans and a musical theme by Camille Saint-Saëns.

[...]

Prix Maud Mottier jury, museum director Felicity Lunn with Nilbar Güreş. Photo: Stefan Rohner

Since 2015 the Kunsthaus Pasquart in Biel has been awarding the Prix Maud Mottier to artists who work primarily in the medium of painting. The prize from the legacy of Mme M. Mottier-Lovis is awarded twice a year, at least one of which is awarded in connection with a solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Pasquart.

Nilbar’s solo show Sour as a Lemon at Kunsthaus Paquart is on view until 13th June 2021.
A publication accompanying the exhibition with a text by Pierre Bal Blanc and an interview with the artist will be published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. With the kind support of the Federal Chancellery Vienna, the Austrian Cultural Forum Bern, and the SAHA Association.

Nilbar Güreş' previous awards:
2013 Professor-Hilde-Goldschmidt-Award (AT)
2014 Msgr. Otto Mauer Award (AT)
2015 BC21 Art Award (AT)
2018 De'Longhi Art [...]