Fillip Rosbach Galerie 1. Mai bis 28. Mai 2008

Christoph Kern cubic worlds

Fillip Rosbach Galerie 1. Mai bis 28. Mai 2008

Christoph Kern cubic worlds

Christoph Kern uses old master knowledge of the material of painting with almost scientific obsessiveness to‚ breed cubes’. In his investigations he follows various tracks: cubes imploding in space, gyrating in science – fiction – like structures that evoke connotations like Star Wars or Kubrick’s 2001. Or monolithic cubes that seem to all but eliminate pictorial space in their attempt to push towards and flow over the edges. And, most recently, a focus on futuristic landscapes that appear to have been generated by the cubes themselves, yet in which the cubes tend more towards dissolution. Kern’s paintings are an accumulated history of their own making. They are built up of many layers, beginning with the initial scenario under investigation, setting the scene. With each progressive layer, the cubes’ evolutions, their growth, colour, position and movement in space as well as their relationship towards each other is traced, the positions at which they arrive are tested and pushed towards a point at which the image can rest. This stage is documented before the painting process continues. Pentimenti and animated films show the different stages of one painting’s transformation and are a way for the viewer to share in its evolution. In ‘Pica’ (p.12) cubes crowd their way into the painting and cluster around a bird’s – eye view of a plane in the distance that has asserted itself against an all but obliterated progenitor of the remaining hovering cubes. Yet traces of this ‘ancestor’ remain, making for another ambiguous play with the illusionistic potential of the painting: The erased cube’s top shows the sky’s reflec-tion that seems to come from and announce an entirely different climate-zone. The crisp blue in this ambiguous field is so unlike the polluted atmosphere glimpsed in the background to the far right that one begins to understand

that Kern not only confounds our expectations of coherence of space but also those of time. The seductiveness of that bit of sky oscillates between lending itself to be perceived as reflection or as ‘actual’ sky, a further opening-out, another window onto a different world. As though it were tempting us –like the Russian dolls principle -to yet another place. As in a picture puzzle this play with positive and negative space makes for an ambiguity that is inherently connected to Kern’s attempt to negotiate between the opposing forces of Baroque space and the Modernist representative of the rational-the cube. This is also the dialectical game played by the ‘windows’ (e.g. in ‘Binh’and’WYB’, p.7 and 14), the reflective and transparent surfaces (‘BurCr’, ‘Beog’, p.14 and 15), mirrorings and interpenetrations of cubes and space. They draw our attention to painting’s main conflict: the tension between its essence (in the Greenbergian sense) of being a two-dimensional flat object and its potential into three dimensions. In his work, Christoph Kern confidently asserts the idea of the painting as a window to the world, the notion modernism worked hard to dispense with. When the cubes infiltrate the baroque stage–like landscapes, as representatives of the abstract and rational, the controversy over space is sustained and mediated by Kern during the painting process, thereby pitting the modernist tenet against a knowledge of the long history of painting that has gone before. For him the main challenge is not to ‘people space with cubes, but to push the painting towards a point when the cubes will have created their own environment’ and these two divergent ideas that were deemed to be incompat-ible will have undergone a transformation that has made for a world that as a painting is a believable, convincing entity. Committed to spatial illusion.

Nicola Irmer

Jos, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslinSpinalis, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin

Krui, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin 2005, 50 x 40 cm (19.7x15.7 in), charcoal on paper

NeXt, 2007, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin Kara, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin

WYB, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslinconstr. set I+II, 2007, each 50 x 40 cm (19.7x15.7 in), watercolor on paper

Installation View, Gallery filipp Rosbach

Kara, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin Kafue, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder, egg tempera on muslin

Oaxa, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin Sialko, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder, egg tempera on muslin

Gadam, 2005, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin construction drawing, pencil, paper, 2006

CoT, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin BabuL, 2007, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder/eggtempera on muslin

Pica, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin Installation View, Gallery filipp Rosbach

Luv, 2007, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder/egg tempera on muslinBinH, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin

BeoG, 2007, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslinBurCr, 2006, 150 x 180 cm (4.92 x 5.90 ft), acrylic binder on muslin

Filipp Rosbach Galerie GbR Josef Filipp, künstlerische Leitung Geschäftsführer: Michaela Rosbach, Jörg Rosbach Spinnereistraße 7, Halle 20. D, PF 508 D-04179 Leipzig Telefon: +49 (0)341. 241 94 62 E-Mail: info@filipprosbach.com

Biography

1960 Born in Munich.1979-81 Studies in Philosophy and History, LMU, Munich.1981-88 Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. BFA, MFA.1994-96 Instructor for Design at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Potsdam1997 Postgraduate scholarship, State of Bavaria, Department of Science and Culture, Munich: -Lecturer/Visiting artist at SMFA, Boston, MA. -Visiting artist and presentation at the M.I.T. Media Lab and CAVS directed by Prof. Steve Benton. -Visiting Artist and presentation at Hunter College, NYC. -Presentation of „The Imagery Kit“ at the 7th Annnual International Conference of The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin1999/08 Visiting Professor/Instructor at the University GH Paderborn, (Focus: Interface analogue/digital media)since 1989 in Berlin

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

2008 Cubic Worlds, Fillipp Rosbach Gallery, Berlin 2008 The Diversity of the Painted Cube, Titanium Yiayiannos Gallery, Athens; Gallery Heufelder, Munich2007/02 Ulysses Gallery, Vienna; John Sailer and Gabriele Wimmer

2004 The Evolution of the Painted Cube, KERN Prod. (DVD)2003 U.I.G. Gallery, Berlin2001 Würfelspiel, Stühler Gallery2000 Artenvielfalt, GBW, Munich (Catalogue)1998 The Uncertainty of the Cube, focus mediport, Berlin1997 Storage, The Funeral Home, Boston, MA1996 Bildsystem Bildbausatz, Neue Galerie Dachau (DVD+Catalogue)1996 HART&weich, Städtische Galerie Neuburg (with W. Ellenrieder) (Catalogue)1989 Mit mir verglichen bin ich normal Kunstverein DAH (Catalogue)1990 Stiegen, Galerie am Maxwehr, Landshut, (Catalogue)

Group Exhibitions (Selection)

2008 Obsession, Neue Galerie, Landshut2008/05 The DVD-Project, München, Breda, Vlissingen, Madrid,www.dvdproject.org2005 In Deep, Transcending Genre barriers – Project1999 Bildwuchs, Kunstverein Ulm 1997 The Staff Shaft Show, SMFA, Boston, MA1995 Toys, Edition, Gallery Hohenthal und Bergen Köln, Tine Nehler art Consulting

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