ARTIST WATCH: TOBIAS BUCKEL

 

The German artist Tobias Buckel (*1978), currently based in London and Nürnberg, is one of most interesting emerging painters that I have met in London. His relatively small, yet strong paintings are complex and thoughtful; and his use of forms and colour seems self-confident but also curious to me. Fascinating constructions meet an open heart - never disgusting, but always a bit disturbing - I could look at these paintings for hours! For more information on Tobias' work look at his website www.tobias-buckel.de or visit his upcoming group show "Wanderlust" in London, which is supported by DAAD and runs from the 1st to the 6th of October. Additionally you can also see his work at the "Jerwood Drawing Prize" exhibition in London, which runs until the 30th of October.

       

ON RICHARD HAMILTON

JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES TODAY’S HOMES SO DIFFERENT, SO APPEALING? 1956

  

SWINGEING LONDON 67, 1967-68

The British artist Richard Hamilton, who died last week aged 89, was destined to go down in the annals of art history as the “father of Pop Art.” It was an epithet that he wore lightly, once claiming in an interview that: “I don't think I'm particularly proud of it but I am willing to accept that I do feel some responsibility” for this revolutionary aesthetic shift towards the popular, transient, expendable, mass produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business.

His most famous image - Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? - was produced in 1956, as post-war Britain entered a boom era of mass production and consumption on a scale previously unseen. It is a dense and urgent homage to consumerism, sex, modern aspirations and classic glamour, which does not so much blend high and low, new and old cultural forms, as pile them on top of one-another, slap-dash, to effect a jarring, iconoclastic disintegration of cultural hierarchies. Hamilton, like his long-time friend and mentor Duchamp, was concerned with asking the big questions about art (sometimes seriously, reflexively; at other times sardonically, with an irreverent wink). What is it? Where is it? Who is the artist? Who decides? All are questions that continue to inform and motivate art production and criticism today.

LONDON: BYAM SHAW MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW

13 international and diverse artists, producing paintings, drawings, photos, sculptures, videos and (sound-) installations, curated one of the best degree shows that I have seen so far in London. Professional and actually quite serious, these artists show lots of large scaled, elaborate and partly fascinating pieces. A click on the name of the artists should lead you to their websites.

LONDON: CHELSEA MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW PART II

Jonathan Morgan

Tobias Buckel

Bernard Cella,  curated by Michele Drascek (MA Curating)

Anita Delaney

Rasmus Nilausen

Hyungwook Lee

Thomas Griffiths

Over 70 MA Fine Art graduates from Chelsea College of Art and Design are currently showing their degree show-pieces. Additionally, and just as interesting, the graduates from Ma Curating, Ma Graphic Design, Ma Interior Design and Ma Textile Design exhibit their final works. Clicking on the artist's name underneath each picture or video should lead you directly to their websites (in case they have one). You can still see the show until this Thursday evening. It can be quite confusing to run through the building trying to see everything, so I'd advice you to get a hold of a map and - absolutely worth it - a catalogue (5-10 GBP). If you should be interested, you'll find pictures from the opening in the previous artfridge post.

LONDON: CHELSEA MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW OPENING

all photos by Lars Bjerre

These are some random photos from the private view at Chelsea's Ma Degree show last Friday. Details will follow in a second part. For now, this much is clear: Visit the exhibition if you have the time! It shows lots of high quality work from emerging international artists - and by the way a remarkable number of paintings, drawings and videos.

CHELSEA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN / MA DEGREE SHOW

from the 2nd to the 8th of September

Chelsea College of Art and Design, UAL 

16 John Islip Street (right next to Tate Britain)
SW1P 4JU, London

Open from:  Monday – Friday: 10am – 7pm

JACK THURGAR - WILD SUMMER SOLSTICE RITUAL

These are two hypnotizing videos that I took last Friday from Jack Thurgar's performance "The Fire Mix [Six Sacred Weeds]" at the Glory Hole group exhibition at Byam Shaw College. Often inspired by subcultures, urban mythology and hidden codes that live beneath our representational society, Thurgar presents his very own version of this spiritual spectacle, by cutting off dried blooms from 6 mystical, legendary herbs and gently rearranging them into a circled ornament. The summer solstice - midsummer night - is celebrated in various countries and usually these events are quite different in their focus on spiritual objects, songs or rituals. The loud exhibition music does not originally belong to the performance.

LONDON: CHELSEA BA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW

From top to bottom: 1-2  Gurmit // 3-5 Sarah Randles //  6 So Young Moon  

The BA Fine Art degree show from Chelsea College of Art and Design included Gurmit's "Inside Out" sculpture, a huge site-specific golden sausage presented in a reddish-dark room, which made me feel as if I was standing inside of a body. Gurmit, who is also a trained goldsmith, has applied thousands of golden stickers onto the archaic intestine, which made it appear even more alive. Sarah Randles' amazing bird drawings, and the human birdhouse containing only one light-ball and one drawing of a wrapped-in human being, had a touch of a reinterpretation of Kafka's Metamorphoses. And So Young Moon (what a great name) put an emphasis on consistency, exhibiting stuffed out gloves, over-over-over sized shirts and plain clothes with personal inscriptions. 

LONDON: CAMBERWELL UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE SHOW

From top to bottom: William David Marriott, Sinhead Reed-Forrester and Julie Bennett with her paintings

On Monday I visited Camberwell to see one more BA Degree-Show opening - soon, I think, my head has little capacity for more degree shows left - and again, I picked some of my favorites. This show was highly diverse, due to the amount of all the different courses. I had a special eye for the BA Painting, with emerging and very interesting artists, such as Julie Bennett and Sinhead Reed-Forrester. Bennett's miniature-painting-assemblage "Born to be famous?" shows a range of sensitive and roughly painted childhood portraits from artists who have inspired her throughout her life. William David Marriott, a BA painting student, yet currently sculptor of monstrous babies, has really created some quite eerie sculptures - a cross-mix between Hans Bellmer and some images of horror movies that one would like to get out of the brain. Similarly, the BA Drawing students hardly exhibited any drawings, but rather sculptures and installations. All in all this is a diversified and sort of labyrinth-like degree show, that should offer something for everyone's taste. Its worth going, which you can do until the 25th of June. More photos and information after the click:

LONDON: BYAM SHAW, UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE SHOW IN FINE ARTS

Sean Pearce

James Seow

Jenny Lewis

The undergraduate-Summer/Degree shows are starting and you shouldn't miss looking at some fresh art. These here are photos from the BA and Postgraduate Fine arts + FdA Fine Art Skills and Practices at Byam Shaw, Central Saint Martins. Packed with interesting art - especially sculptures, installations, video material, and some really confusing catalogues (I am sorry if I should have got the artist's names for the art pieces wrong, I tried to match the numbers to the pieces) - this was a great surprise. I posted some of my favorites, such as James Seow grass-drawer, Jenny Lewis rocket-chair-lp-player, or Sean Pearces kinky-pink sausages here. See below for a map, more photos and details. You can visit the show until the 2nd of July.

DANIEL RAPLEY

Have you ever thought about reliving history and rewriting a whole bible as they did in the old days when printing and copying was a hard-to-grasp fantasy? Well, I know someone who actually makes a living out of it: With his project "Authorized" Daniel Rapley (*1979), a british artist who currently finishes his MA in Fine Arts at Chelsea College (UAL) in London, literally writes down the King James Version of the Bible by hand. So far he completed nearly 500,000 neatly written words of the Genesis on handwritten A4 sheets of ruled paper. The interesting aspect is not only that his handcraft becomes persistence and somehow questions the whole thing in itself, but also that once the project is displayed no one will be able to feel, or retrace what patience and neatness he had to keep up with. 
See also: danielrapley.co.uk