Press Release | Ulrich Gebert, "The Negotiated Order," at Winkleman Gallery and Sigrid Viir in the Curatorial Research Lab, June 1-30, 2012

Urlich Gebert
The Negotiated Order

June 1 - June 36, 2012
Opening: Friday, June 1, 6 - 8 PM

Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present “The Negotiated Order,” our second solo exhibition by German artist Ulrich Gebert. Furthering his series of works dealing with the human urge to dominate nature, and the often-ludicrous extremes we’ll go to in that pursuit, Gebert offers here a striking suite of mixed media works in which found photographs of humans systemically subordinating or controlling animals have been reworked so only the human is still visible. The resulting images make the humans look ridiculous, underscoring how such so-called scientific efforts generally reveal more about human culture than they do nature.

Each of the works in The Negotiated Order series includes a manipulated found image (produced as a silver gelatin print) “framed” within a hand-distressed canvas ground. Formally, the suite of works references both minimalist paintings and vintage photography, lending the series as a whole a calming, seemingly scientific authority. By removing the object of the presumably understandable human activity in each image, though, Gebert introduces a subtle, and at times very humorous, uncertainty about what we’re observing.

Gebert’s work often deals with animals on a superficial level, as a means to focus more on how human beings function. Derived in part from an awareness that nearly every single thing humans do to other human beings was tested on animals first (from cyclone B to traveling into space), the implications of how we behave when attempting to control nature become more ominous. As the artist has written about this series, “the "Negotiated Order" pieces are like an allegory for me, where the reason of interaction - the counterpart - is no longer present and the will to subordinate and control is somewhat overemphasized to a point where it becomes ridiculous. Just a bit off....”

Ulrich Gebert lives and works in Munich, Germany. He received his Masters in Photography at Royal College of Art, London, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art and with Timm Rautert at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at KLEMM’S in Berlin; an exhibition at the DZ Bank Kunstsammlung in Frankfurt and at the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen. His work has been reviewed widely in Europe and the United States including in The Village Voice and ArtNews.

And in the Curatorial Research Lab

I don’t know Sigrid Viir. I have not interviewed her until now, just looked at her work. She neatly overcomes the first problem of a young artist. She grabs our attention, first of all with a sharp, almost vicious sense of colour that insinuates itself straight into the blood stream, but also by posting the photographs as part of a sculpture installation. This is not just about packaging, but is a way of reframing the way we are used to thinking about art works. She is trying to tackle the oldest dilemma of photography: when the shutter closes, it stops time. Today, our concept of a work of art is changing rapidly, against the understanding of art as a single, stilled moment captured by a solitary genius. Sigrid Viir appears to be part of this mutation.

[…] I walked around her installations, which forced you to stand at different angles. Sometimes the structures were very similar to easels. There was a temporary edge to it. They were awkward. How could you live with these? And the world inside the photographs was confused with objects stacked in bizarre ways, filed dysfunctionally, arranged as if the inhabitants of the land within them were very different from us.

[…] There are references to other art. One thinks of Rebecca Horn, or earlier kinetic art. In the colours and her sparing use of shapes, there is more than a whiff of the wunderkind of the moment, Elad Lassry. As I’ve said, I don’t know Sigrid Viir, but while I am look at her work, I am constantly expecting a surprise.

--Excerpted from “I Don’t Know Sigrid Viir,” an interview with the artist by Alistair Hicks, Senior Curator, Deutsche Bank. From the catalog Sigrid Viir: Selected Works, 2012, published by Temnikova and Kasela Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia.

Sigrid Viir was born in 1979 and lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. In addition to multiple group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, Viir is a member of the highly acclaimed three-artist collective Visible Solutions LLC, whose work is included in Manifesta 9, which takes place in Limburg Belgium, June – September 2012. In May 2012, Viir was the recipient of the Pulse Prize, given every year in recognition of an outstanding solo project in the New York art fair. Viir is represented by Temnikova and Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia.

For more information, please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com.