GALERIE GABRIEL ROLT

EVERY TIME I CLOSE MY EYES

ANNA BJERGER

10 SEPTEMBER — 15 OCTOBER 2011

OPENING: SATURDAY 10TH OF SEPTEMBER, 17.00 – 20.00 HRS



'The starting point can be an image or a very strong notion of something that will run through the works. I think of it as laying a jigsaw puzzle where each piece is vital and the meaning disclosed at the end.’ Anna Bjerger, 2011 

GALERIE GABRIEL ROLT is proud to announce Every Time I Close My Eyes, Swedish painter Anna Bjerger's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Bjerger’s images — varied scenes executed in loose, vivid gestures — pose puzzles for the viewer. Painted from photographs rather than from life, their subjects are derived from out-of-date reference books, instruction manuals, gardening books and magazines, possessing little overtly in common with one another. Their feeling is both familiar and anonymous, intimate yet curiously disconnected. Unmoored from their original contexts and unsettling each other’s narratives, the images’ meanings become slippery and ambiguous.


Anna Bjerger – SEATED, Oil on aluminum panel, 2011

Bjerger’s pictures call attention to the physicality of their medium. Paint is applied wet on wet in broad brushstrokes, building to areas of thick impasto, to drips that slide down unchecked and to painterly surfaces detached from their images’ contents. The speed with which the works have been painted seem to strive after the instantaneous quality of photography yet all the while assert the transformative nature of painting. 

Every Time I Close My Eyes represents an entirely new body of work. Its motifs are those that have appeared in painting through the ages — still lifes, landscapes, portraits and nudes — and recall the works of particular artists. A full length depiction of a contemporarily dressed woman whose skirt is made out of swirls of blue paint summons the decorative portraits of Gustav Klimt, for instance, whilst the girl in Edvard Munch’s Puberty is recast as a tan-marked woman bearing a blithe expression on her face. Bjerger has described the subject of her paintings as the ‘tool’ with which to engage with the works, selecting images that exude ‘a boundless quality as well as compositional strength.’ Similarly, the size of her pictures (several in this exhibition are far larger than ever before) impact on the reading of them: they demand to be looked at both from afar and up close, and from different positions within the space, inviting a physical involvement from the viewer as the exhibition is experienced as a whole. Through all of the means available to painting — the handling of medium, composition and scale — Bjerger personalises her imagery, compounding familiarity with further familiarity until it becomes strange.


Anna Bjerger – FRUIT, Oil on aluminum panel, 2011                                          

Anna Bjerger was born in 1973 in Skallsjo, Sweden. Her work is currently on display at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, she will exhibit at the Earlsfort Terrace in the Dublin Contemporary 2011 in September, and she also took part in Vad vi är (a duo exhibition with Jenny Källman) at the Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro, Mexico. Bjerger studied fine art at St. Martins and painting at the Royal College of Art, London. Recent solo exhibitions include A Perfect Throw, Paradise Row, London (2010), Strange Talents, ALP/Peter Bergman, Stockholm (2010), Invisibles, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam (2009) and The Snail’s Trail, David Risely Gallery, London (2008). Bjerger's work is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Glaspaleis Heerlen, Gävle Landsting, Sweden, Larsen Collection, Stockholm, Zabludowicz Collection, London, alongside many private collections. 


Anna Bjerger – MAN WITH LIGHT, Oil on aluminum panel, 2011

TO UN-SUBSCRIBE FROM OUR LIST SEND AN EMAIL WITH  “UN-SUBSCRIBE” AS SUBJECT TO:   


—
GALERIE GABRIEL ROLT
Elandsgracht 34
1016 TW  Amsterdam

T:  +31 (0) 20 78 55 146
M: +31 (0) 6 41385833
                    



Open: Wed — Sat | 12 — 18 hrs

—
Current show:
SUMMERSHOW
Marijn Akkermans, Anna Bjerger, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Jodie Carey, Nik Christensen, Shezad Dawood, Bas Geerts, Noa Giniger, Aisling Hedgecock, Thomas Lerooy, Abner Preis, Eva Räder, Davina Semo, Conrad Shawcross, Peter Schuyff, Anoek Steketee, Coen Vunderink, Douglas White, Masao Yamamoto
12 August — 3 September 2011

—
Next show:
EVERY TIME I CLOSE MY EYES
ANNA BJERGER
10 September — 15 October 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday 10 September 2011,
17.00 — 20.00 hrs.