Exhibition Opening: Sand,
Daniel Gustav Cramer & Joana Escoval,
23 Sep – 28 Oct 2017. Grey Noise, Alserkal Avenue.
JE – Medium: metals
DGC – Medium: photos, text, paper, marble, metals
Information from FB event profile:
“Sand is an exhibition featuring a group of selected works carrying autonomous languages yet reflecting the dialogue between the artists’ practices. The works showcased at the gallery are particular in their materiality, their conceptual discreteness and narrative dimension. Two motives occur throughout the exhibition. The properties of the works shown embody a sense of liquidity, a movement directed by gravity. At the same time there is the omnipresent yet faint motive of the mirror. The materials reflect their surroundings, other works literally mirror each other and despite the abstraction of what is present, all works involve the self of the viewer.
The artists declare, that the title itself, Sand, is the first work of the show. It exists only as a word made of four letters, setting a context and mood, it creates a first image, sets a scene. Sand is shaped by its environment, by wind and gravity, matter ground into minute particles. It also is the place where Fata Morganas might occur, mirroring and distorting absent objects.
Cramer and Escoval's fieldwork and slowly crafted works gather and enable transformation, conduction and participation of subjects and substances in the visual world. The physical links between photography, text and sculpture generate new readings may it be through dichotomy, extension, integration or complementarity.
In collaboration with Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon.”
Reproduced from Grey Noise Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/812603635571243/?active_tab=about
Why a collab? – further research needed in to the artists. Where are they from? Does that matter? The lack of a biography removes the identity politics aspect.
1st piece of the exhibition is the title, this is declared in the content for the exhibition statement.
As you enter the modest, L-shaped white walled gallery, housed within an expansive warehouse the show doesn’t strike you. In fact its barely there. Elegant minimal sculptures are positioned around the space, adorning the floor as well as the walls. On the floor, opposite the entrance is a large but subtle metal sculpture, it’s guarded to stop any unwitting gallery-goers from stepping on it.
This is the piece numbered 3 and titled Their beliefs were passed down orally, and thus they could not direct one to written documentations, created by JE. Precious metals – adding value but discarded on the floor, Silver, large chain pieces, 1 foot long, almost perfectly round rings at the end of each, perfectly sealed shut, enclosing the ring from the next piece. Spread across the floor haphazardly in the middle with no discernable end or beginning. Very subtle, elegant, quite beautiful to inspect closely and take in the almost perfect circle. There was a tension and next to its subtly creates an impact. A change of communication perhaps? A chain of ancestral stories holding a group together? Regarding the title, the links are the bonds of communication, the flowing of history, beliefs etc., passed down, the positions of the chain & the messy configuration of communications lacks & problems its twisting & manipulations etc.
DGC Pieces 2, 6 & 12, three different images of the same crater, using, what appears to be the ‘rule of thirds’ a mysterious blue hazy image, a feeling of nostalgia, slight invisibility and perhaps a questions of truth of existence.
JE ‘Healthy forests provide clean water’ copper, brass, gold, didn’t see the material differences, it was high up, suspended from a wall mount, creating an asymmetric arc, reminiscent of a sand dune, or a wave, the diagram of the water cycle, a rainbow, the canopy of a forest. An Elegance.
JE ‘Clean water provides healthy forests’ circles, complete with angles or wire hanging. Shadows from her work are interesting, whether that is intended or not.
DGC ‘Untitled’ stack of A4 paper with printed lines. Allows for own narrative, invitation to participate? A prelude to work.
DGC ‘Cap Formentor, Mallorca, Spain, July 1986’ – 2 stacks of A4 texts. Written from the views of each person in the narrative, does not allude to age, could be children, adolescences or adults – feels intimate could be full of innocence or allows for tarnished mind to allude to other thoughts – artist explains in exhibition pamphlet that it is child. To create a narrative a stage direction, the piece visually paints the scene with the use of language. Does the media remove innocence? Questions how acts of companionship or intimacy are ‘stolen’ from us by other peoples view pints/opinions. Enjoyed the aspect of text as art, I love to write.
JE ‘Rain’ four bits of wire, silver, one mounted on the wall, mounts not visible, 1 foot from the floor, 2 parallel at eye level, 1 mid level and further away. Due to angle and placement felt like the rain carried by the wind, or droplets traversing a windowpane as they fall. Felt dynamic, sense of motion. It captured a heartbeat for a moment, instantly conjuring my personal experience, memories of childhood. DGC’s work dissected it, adding another dimension, the passage continued regardless of the obstacle.
DGC ‘Owl’ found photos, completely lost on me, out of place. Although looking back there was an aspect of evoking memory and reproducing them.
DGC – La Bibliotheque de Pascale #1 – artists books, some were blank with title, some had and item such as a receipt or photo slotted inside, others were photo books, narratives or stage directions for a scene. I loved them. They moved something inside me. I’ve been making books for a few years and its important to me. I get excited & enjoy consuming other peoples work ins book format.
VL1 talks of envy & using it as motivation showing you where you want to be.
not for citation or circulation