Gabriel Vormstein
News of Today: Die Feeling
September 12, 2011–October 29, 2011The Breeder, Athens
The Breeder is pleased to present Gabriel Vormstein’s first solo exhibition in Athens, entitled “News of today: Die feeling”.
Death and failure are recurrent elements in Vormstein’s work, along with the use of newspaper as the artist’s chosen canvas. The traces of time characterize the aesthetics of this material and at the same time allude to contentwise references. As suggested in the exhibition title there is a sense of “snapshot” or point in time, in which the fugacity of existence is intensified as an emotion is linked to its ending. In Gabriel Vormstein´s works newsprint remains an index of already passed events of the day and at the same time becomes alienated by its “new” presence as an art piece.
Vormstein is using classical female figures, which he draws after Egon Schiele’s girls. These women can be seen as new colored statues, votive images or protagonists in the “landscape” of the exhibition. For some of these figures, collaged pieces from older “failed” works of Vormstein are used. By recycling his own work, the artist reanimates his heroines and combines elements and characters from imaginary personas. This recycling also occurs in the abstract pieces, where the collaged newspaper fragments create a new pattern, that recalls classical abstract paintings and moreover is reminescending of old walls or emotional landscapes.
There is an interesting contrast between the realism of the newspaper and the atmospheric storyline that the exhibition is creating. Emphasized by different adapted styles and symbols, the paintings also refer to disappearing and upcoming cultural periods of time. In this sense the past is attached to the present.
Gabriel Vormstein (1974, Konstanz, Germany) recently completed a solo exhibition at Artspace San Antonio in the US (2011). Recent group exhibitions include: Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Germany (2011), Helden Unter Vor Bilder in Der Gegenwartskunst, Kunsthalle Nuernberg (2011), Seltsam so lose im Raum, Kulturstiftung Schloß Agathenburg, Agathenburg, Germany (2010), Berlin Box, Kunsthalle Andratx, Mallorca (2010), Intensivstation, K 21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, im Ständehaus, Dusseldorf , Germany (2011) and more. In 2006 Vormstein participated in the 4th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, “Of Mice + Men” that was curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick.
