Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present the first exhibition of Rebecca Warren in Berlin titled Come Helga, This Is No Place For Us.
The British artist positions herself within a sculptural tradition while deforming and ironically subverting it.
Rebecca Warren’s latest work is represented here by a bronze, three sculptures of unfired clay, and four vitrines containing divers and descriptive objects. She deals with the issue of the artist’s creative process either with found objects or with clay and bronze. Her visual language refers equally to the classical approaches of sculptors as Degas and Fontana, as to the work of Robert Crumb and Helmut Newton.
The amorphous unfired clay sculptures recall human figures. They are like abstract reworkings of the over-sexualised female figures of her earlier works. But here, the figure loses in form and gains in emotional impact through the deformed, fissured surface which shows the physical process of shaping. The clay is partly painted, watercolour-like, lending the sculptures a pictorial quality.
Paint is also applied to the bronze sculpture Head (2001), with a checked textile pattern in several colours. The abstract pattern underlines the anonymity of the faceless bulk of the head which, unlike classical portrait busts, has no individual traits.
Rebecca Warren introduces elements that jar with a process of artistic creation that is traditionally connoted as “male”. Typically “feminine” motifs like fabric patterns, ‘head adornment’, fragile or delicate surfaces, and shades such as light yellow and pink contrast with the material and its history.
Colour is an equally important component in her vitrine collages of wood, cotton-wool balls, neon light and other small objects, setting her work apart from the “male” tradition embodied, for example, by the more earthen coloured vitrines of Joseph Beuys. The neon light illuminates her “magical objects” in the vitrines and charges them with meaning that may be religious and/or psychological.
Rebecca Warren (born 1965) lives and works in London. Having studied at Goldsmiths and Chelsea College, she came to prominence with solo and group shows at major venues. In 2006, she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Recent exhibitions include: Tate Triennial, London (2006); Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario, Canada (2005); Kunsthalle, Zurich (2004); Kunsthalle, Vienna (2004); Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2004) and Hayward Gallery, London (2004).
Upcoming exhibitions:
Zimmerstraße 90-91, September 15 – October 27, 2007: Bridget Riley
Oudenarder Straße 16-20, September 29 – November 17, 2007: Ernesto Neto
For further information please contact the gallery at +49 30 229 24 37.
