Marine Contemporary will host an opening night reception for Annabel Emson and Gereon Krebber on July 30th from 6-9 pm.
From Marine Contemporary:
Marine Contemporary is pleased to present, All the ifs and whens, an exhibition by London based artist, Annabel Emson and Cologne based artist, Gereon Krebber. This two-part exhibition takes place in London and Los Angeles. Part I opens at Kenny Schachter/Rove Projects in London on July 12th and continues at Marine Contemporary in Los Angeles on July 30th.
In this site-specific collaboration of paintings and sculptures, the artists explore the ideas of transformation and contradiction. For both artists, the process of making the work is fundamental to developing a visual language through which they can communicate the feeling of experience to the viewer. Both quiet and confrontational, these works define and redefine the meanings of process and transformation. Bringing elements of chaos and dissonance into a state of harmony, each work matures from an inchoate state into a fully realized presence.
Annabel Emson’s paintings reflect the patterns that arise naturally in the structure of the world around us. Her work explores the psychological drama of the imagination: fantastical and dream-like, each work becomes a performative landscape through which the autobiography of experience is distilled. It is in the suspended spaces between the swaying of depicted figuration and abstraction, that her worlds take shape, merging from rhythmical mark making and application techniques.
Referencing the format of traditional spiritual artwork and incorporating Buddhist concepts of manifestation, these new “Thangka” paintings are about states of mind and contemplation. The work attempts to test the boundaries of space and time, which is reflected in the format of the paintings; the hung canvas material suggestive of ancient scrolls, meditative Thangkas, religious shrouds and historical tapestries. They also point to certain energetic forces and directions, moving upwards or downwards depended on how they are viewed. Emson explains, “I like the idea that they hold no set orientation in the physical world and demonstrate this spacial
freedom through having no affixed top or bottom, but may be hung as the viewer perceives to contemplate them, and that this may change over time.”
The sculptures of Gereon Krebber may remind us of something – a cloud, a giant button, a slice of something meat-like, but the everyday materials, of which they are composed, such as balloons or plastic wrap, are always radically transformed from their original function. Based in London, Krebber regards the spirit of his work as “seriously flippant.” Krebber’s work is full of contradictions. Working predominantly in a site-specific capacity, he makes installations that are at once symbiotic with the spaces they are created for and yet markedly alien within them. His subject is the flowing nature inherent in the creative process of the plastic arts. Although his work may have representational tendencies, it also has liquid, pliant and transitory aspects. His shapes often appear to float in space and, at the same time, react to the architecture of their exhibition space, which endows them with a corporal and vivid
character. His play on dark humor is apparent in the forming of oddities and the beauty that comes from these formations. It is in the inchoate that Krebber finds his moment: “It is when transitions get caught and moments of experience evaporate, when tilting effects freeze and surfaces irisate, that the in-between condenses surprisingly to form”.
Annabel Emson (b.1975, London, United Kingdom) received an MFA from The Slade School of Art in London and a BA from Chelsea College of Art & Design. Emson’s paintings are experiential performances on the relationship between the inner psychological terrain and the outside materialist world; through mark making and the language of paint she creates doorways into autobiographical landscapes that allow her to visually inhabit both worlds. Her work will be shown in the upcoming 2011 “Paint” exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Emson lives and works in London.
Gereon Krebber (b. 1973, Oberhausen, Germany) studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. He graduated in 2002 with an MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. His sculptures are often in unusual and ephemeral materials like foil, foam and burnt timber. Krebber frequently works site specifically, responding to the given parameters of a space. Often attracted to marginalized areas such as pillars, the corners of rooms and beams, he creates friction and overlap between art and architecture.’ (Jacqui McIntosh). Krebber currently lives and works in Cologne and recently received the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Scholarship. He is currently a guest
professor at the HfbK Hamburg.
Marine Contemporary: Annabel Emson and Gereon Krebber
July 30 – August 27, 2011
1733-A
Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA, 90291
