11/03 – 08/04/2011

Hidde van Seggelen Gallery is pleased to announce Lawrence Westlake’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

At first glance Westlake’s sculptures seem to have emerged, momentarily, from the past. Each component within the installation has been composed and refined with deliberate control. Through his manipulation of materials, the artist proposes a fictional history not only of the physical matter, but of a more wholly encompassing physical environment.

The works were made recently, yet there are incidents of repair and restoration. Their construction frequently involves pushing the capabilities of an object, a shape, a cluster of matter. It is a process of ruination, or entropy: the materials are accelerated towards a precipice at which they will either sit comfortably, or collapse into the present.

Through these objects we are encouraged to confront our uneasy relationship with memories, mythology and the recounting of historical events. Their appearance resembles that of an archaeological find – yet this possibility is absurd. The works negotiate these matters between themselves – each component adds a gesture to the symbolic proposition. Each seems to have a reason for existing, legitimising itself through association with collective memories and experiences. There is no clear symbolic order within the group, though the conceptual weight of geometric structure is reinforced through a visual relationship to modernist works of art.

Despite such lofty associations, the sculptures remain weighty and materialistic. The interaction within the assembly perpetuates our awareness of tension and dialogue. Westlake has said we are ‘assaulted by symbols emerging through holes in time continuously, some malevolent, some benign, but all blind.’ In the midst of this, personal history mingles with the story of the whole world. Both are reflected, misrepresented, dismissed, and recalled in the wrong order, in pursuit of something we have only glimpsed from the shore.

DAMIAN TAYLOR

PAINTINGS AND OTHER THINGS

PAINTINGS 22 OCTOBER – 6 NOVEMBER 2010

OTHER THINGS 12 – 27 NOVEMBER 2010

PRESS RELEASE

Hidde van Seggelen Gallery is pleased to announce Damian Taylor’s forthcoming exhibition – his third show with the gallery. Presented in two parts, the works continue explor- ing Taylor’s fascination with the act of painting and the me- diation of – and through – images. Two publications con- nect with this exhibition: Damian Taylor – Paintings with essays by Bernice Donszelmann and David Ryan; and other Things with a text by Ed Atkins.

Part One: The Paintings

… he studied her face again. It did not seem very like his own, but perhaps he was mistaken; maybe it was like the same face done in pastels and in a woodcut, the difference in the medium obscuring the congruence of line and plane. There was some- thing in this face he found disturbing. After a while, he realised that he simply could not read its expression; what was missing was whatever it is that enables one to draw the usual inferences about a person. It was an expressive face, but nothing was em- phasised… (Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities)

The Paintings presents two groups of work; those on abraded metal grounds and those from abraded metal grounds. The works on metal could be seen as a challenge to the flatness and apparent photographic reproducibility of the two-di- mensional surface. Through the ground’s subtle interaction with light, a work’s appearance changes in relation to the viewer’s movements in the gallery and alters from space to space. As such, no single visual instance of the work defines it, and the notion of a photographic record becomes – if not absurd – at least highly problematic. To some extent this is true of all paintings. However, rather than a simple ‘critique’ of photographic mediation, the works exist through their mediation of photography: not only in their glossy, limpid surfaces but more profoundly in the fragmentary, snap-shot presentation of multiple instances and inscrutable surfaces – not void of form and imagery, the works refuse to empha- sise one example over another.

At the heart of this is an engagement with pictorial space as something meaningful, if ineffable; painting as a site for the co-existence of multiple, often conflicting visual im- pressions to cohere into a significant order. Yet it is an order always destabilised from within the work, both through its multiple viewing instances and through each layer asserting an independence of form, reference, and scale.

The works from metal also take as their foundation an abraded sheet of metal, but use its subtle indentations as a mould. The three works presented in The Paintings are all developments from this mould, yet all different both in size and surface. Although the mediation of the original ‘image’ is wholly mechanical – manual, of the hands – the result al- ludes more obviously to the digital; as one viewer put it: ‘as though you had the one image and in Photoshop had put different Damian filters over it…’

Part Two: The other Things

“Twins, possibly.” “Aren’t we twins?” “Certainly!” Ulrich suddenly became evasive. “Twins are rare; twins of different gender especially so. But when, into the bar- gain, they differ in age and have hardly known each other, it’s quite a phenomenon – one really worthy of us!” (Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities)

The focus of The other Things is a group of large black and white photographs. Each of the works derive from Untitled (2010) [see overleaf] as a direct optical trace of that work’s surface. This is achieved by reflecting light off the paint- ing’s surface onto a sheet of photosensitive paper. The pho- tographs, by limiting themselves to emphasising only the minute surface details of the source work, make visible what is there, yet almost invisible. Like an x-ray they reveal the painterly construction behind the photograph-like, smooth, mirrored surface. Yet, even when this indexical method – an analytical dissection of the painting – is known, the works maintain something enigmatic and unknowable, with each work demanding to be read in its singularity rather than as an obvious variation on a theme; whether that singularity suggests allusions to a Franz Kline painting, a Monet, Turn- er or Pollock; rock formations; radio-telescope images of nebulae or scanning electron micrographs of gems; calligra- phy; vermicelli; something very big, something very small; water, sky, fish, grout, Manet…

Alongside the photographs will be presented a number of traditional intaglio prints. Whereas the photographs em- phasise the surface of the works on metal, the prints empha- sise the abraded metal ground, although emphasising it via a surface. The prints take as their etching plates sections of the surface of one of Taylor’s group of paintings Eight Greys (2009), which is cast in resin from a sheet of abraded metal. The subtlety of the white prints, altering through conversa- tion with light – a muted complement to the works on metal – contrasts with the visual stability of the image achieved in the graphite prints, which, like the photographs, stabilise the fleeting nature of the source-work without offering it any definite identity.

Paintings and other Things

Although always foregrounding mediation and the specific possibilities of a work’s medium, Taylor’s practice is driven by an urge for immediacy. Not programmatic ‘expressive’ spontaneity, but an immediacy wrested through the chinks of mediation: that instant when minutiae transform into compelling wholes and when sweeping abstractions co- alesce into the vividly concrete.

For further information and images please contact:

HIDDE VAN SEGGELEN GALLERY

2 Michael Road

London SW6 2AD

United Kingdom

+44 (0)20 3441 3652

EMAIL: mail@hiddevanseggelen.com

Gallery opening hours: Wed – Sat ,12 – 6 pm.

FOREIGN BODIES

9 SEPTEMBER – 17 OCTOBER 2010

PRESS RELEASE

Hidde van Seggelen Gallery is pleased to announce the forthcoming exhibition by Natasha Rosling (London, 1985) – her first major solo in the UK.  Constructed within the new gallery, Rosling has integrated the wooden roof structure as a rack from which her large-scale structures dissect and hover above the ground.

Over the recent years Rosling has produced installations internationally; in China at OCAT Center of Contemporary Art with Vision Forum; Sculpture Space, Utica, United States; Badjidala Centre of Contemporary Art, Mali; European Ceramic Work Centre, Den Bosch, The Netherlands; W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

…Newly arrived and quite ignorant of the languages of Levant, Marco Polo could express himself only by drawing objects from his baggage – drums, salt fish, necklaces of warthogs’ teeth – and pointing to them with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder or of horror…

In each sculpture different forms, materials and processes present themselves, derived from the work’s specific cultural locale. Underlying these context-specific concerns is Rosling’s fascination with how the human body negotiates the world – its mysterious entwining of a present, physical space with personal and culturally mediated memories – and how the bold, formal qualities of her sculptures both belong to this everyday world and, through their embeddedness with a history of post-war sculpture, reflect upon it at a remove.

Of the works’s formal qualities and position within the history of sculpture one could say much – one might comment on the co-existence of violent tension with an appreciation of beauty bordering on the tranquil; on how a work’s materials remain defiantly what they are whilst being something one never thought they could be; on the ambiguous forms which never seem abstractly remote but over-loaded with shadows of specific visual references, etc., etc. – but at the same time one wouldn’t have said much at all. Nothing very important. Nothing as succinct as the work. It is not that language isn’t an important frame of the work; it’s just not one the artist chooses. Possibly a parallel literary allusion is appropriate.

The above quotation is taken from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities – ostensibly a collection of described cities narrated by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. Although initially confined to props and gestures Polo soon learns to speak:

…but you would have said communication between them was less happy than in the past: to be sure, words were mor

e useful than objects and gestures in listing the most important things in every province – monuments, markets, costumes, fauna and flora – and yet when Polo began to talk about how life must be in those places, day after day, evening after evening, words failed him, and little by little, he went back to relying on gestures, grimaces, glances

Like the Venetian, Rosling’s work presents the viewer with a crystallisation of experience as eloquent and affecting as it is mute and material. And in the continuities connecting her works – her formal language, if you like – we find a parallel to Calvino’s conundrum of faithfully narrating experience: for, city after city, year after year, an image emerges from the multitude of cities Polo conjures:

“Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”

“There is still one city of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about? Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice… To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city which remains implicit.”

It is here that Rosling diverges from Polo, for her work, as with so much of contemporary culture, is haunted precisely by this lack of any stable first ground [sic], of anywhere one can identify with as ‘home’. It is this lack – an ambivalent blessing and curse – which confers upon the work its poignancy and, possibly, its hopefulness.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears… You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours… Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer.”

For further information and images please contact:

HIDDE VAN SEGGELEN GALLERY

2 Michael Road

London SW6 2AD

United Kingdom

+44 (0)20 3441 3652

EMAIL: mail@hiddevanseggelen.com

Gallery opening hours: Wed – Sat ,12 – 6 pm.

23 May – 19 June 2010.

Melanie Carvalho - Looking for the Source

HIDDE VAN SEGGELEN GALLERY

2 Michael Road

London SW6 2AD

For further information and images see: www.hiddevanseggelen.com

8 Jan – 10 April 2010

For further information and opening times please see: Tate Britain: Art Now

Andy Holden - Return Of The Pyramid Piece 2008 - Installation view at Tate Britain

Andy Holden was born in Bedford in 1982. He graduated from Goldsmith’s College in 2005 and now lives and works in Bedfordshire. Holden has exhibited widely, including recent solo shows at Hidde Van Seggelen, London; Works/Projects, Bristol and Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, Netherlands, and will be curating a music festival at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge in September 2010.

The current exhibition at TATE Britain has recently been reviewed by Roya Nikkhah. Please see Andy Holden Sunday Telegraph Review.

In March Holden’s work will be part of a presentation at TEFAF Showcase in Maastricht, The Netherlands which runs from 12 – 22 March 2009.   At this fair we will present works by Harmen Brethouwer, Andy Holden and Pieter Laurens Mol. For information about TEFAF Showcase please see: TEFAF 2010.

Andy Holden has a comprehensive website, please see: http://andyholdenartist.com/

At the fair  we will be exhibiting works by the following artists: Harmen Brethouwer, Melanie Carvalho, Andy Holden, Marrigje de Maar, Pieter Laurens Mol, Phil Root,  Natasha Rosling and Damian Taylor.

For further information:

Pieter Laurens Mol, Lantern for St. Peter’s Church of Rome, 1993-2009 Phosphoresced paint on foam rubber, glued on black-and-white reproductions of Michelangelo’s drawings. This work is part of series of 6 works based on Michelangelo’s drawings in the Teylers Haarlem, The Netherlands

Hidde van Seggelen

91c Jermyn Street

London SW1Y 6JB

United Kingdom

Mail@hiddevanseggelen.com

www.hiddevanseggelen.com.

An exhibition by Damian Taylor

3 December – 22 January 2010

Opening hours:  Tuesday – Friday and by appointment

PRESS RELEASE:

Deconstructing the methods and materials of Taylor’s ongoing works on metal, Avocado – comprising a suite of three distinct series of works – focuses on an exploration of the tension between painterly surface and pictorial space within abstract painting.

Untitled (Graphite I, II and III) 2009 translate the forms and marks of previous works through an unorthodox application of orthodox drawing materials, highlighting the material presence of their surface whilst destabilising this through subtle play with light.

The prints Untitled (1/8th Grey to Graphite II) and Untitled (1/8th Grey to White IV) 2009 take as their etching plates, effectively, sections of the surface of one of Taylor’s group of paintings Eight Greys (2009). The subtlety of the white print, altering in relation to light – a muted complement to their source-work – contrasts with the visual stability of the image achieved in the graphite print.

The series of resin panels, all Untitled (2009), take as their starting point the raw material of previous works – an unused sheet of metal: aluminium, copper, various stainless steels. The resulting works are casts of these, leaving the original foundation unchanged – possibly a rather too literal prospective archaeology of works to come.

The works focus on the specific qualities of scale and colour, placement and interrelation, and the viewer’s experience of space.

For further information please contact the gallery: www.hiddevanseggelen.com

Please note that the gallery is closed from 24 December 2009 – 8 January 2010

The paintings feature an outcrop of a rock off the coast of Scotland named Rockall.  This is the last land mass claimed by the British Empire during the cold war.  In order to claim the land it needed to be proved as habitable, (it is only 19meters high and 25 meters across). The story goes that the British government had to put a single marine solder on the rock for 40 days, attached in a small pod to the only flat ledge on the rock in order to claim this land and the sea belonging to it and to add to the existing landmass.   Ownership of the rock has been contested ever since by other countries, including Norway (as it is close to the Faroe Islands), Ireland and Iceland, in part due to fishing rights for the surrounding water.  The ornithologist, James Fisher, who was part of the party who first raised the British flag on Rockall, said: “it could be the most isolated small rock in the oceans of the world!”. The Rock is known to many only through its inclusion on the British Shipping Forecast.

Andy Holden - Bastion of Empire II - 2009 - Emulsion paint on paper - 70 x 100 cm

The different versions in this series have colour schemes taken from a new range of Homebase paints with contemporary flavoured titles such as Mocha, Caramel and Truffle, which have been blended like Starbucks coffee’s into Holden’s recipes.  The  subject matter is similar to that of the Ice Cream Rock of Gibraltar, a painting dating from 2004.  At one hand one could say that it is just a painting of a thing, a mass or a form – solid/outcrop subjected to erosion from sea, and in the other hand the thing is also a metaphor for political instability.

One should certainly mention painter Paul Cezanne. His late paintings of Mont Sainte Victoire seem to mirror the works motif, permanence, colour and abstraction of this series by Holden.  Please have a look at this amusing youtube video.

Andy Holden will present a solo exhibition at TATE Britain in 2010 which is scheduled from January to April 2010 as part of the ART NOW PROGRAMME, which features young and upcoming British artists.  Holden recently presented a body of work entitled The Desert Project at Works|Projects in Bristol and was subsequently included in the group exhibition Fallen Out Of Space curated by Bowie/vanValen. Previous to this Hidde van Seggelen presented the exhibition by Holden entitled A Series of Small Encounters and the performance Two Short Works in Time at the Odeon cinema.

Harmen Brethouwer - Feng Huang - 1998 - Collection Central Museum Utrecht

The materials that Brethouwer employs for these delicate sculptures are topaz, jasper, quartz, heliotrope, coral, lapis lazuli, nephrite, aventurine, agate, gold, crystal, enamel and diamonds. The entire series of Bibelots will consist of about 30 different pieces. At PAN Amsterdam we will present four Bibelots together with a presentation of other recent works by Brethouwer. For further information and images about the Bibelot series please contact the gallery at: www.hiddevanseggelen.com. or visit Harmen Brethouwer.

Natsha Rosling - Dark Stuff Spread Out - 2009

At PAN Amsterdam we will present an installation of hundreds of black fired ceramic ‘particles’ which can best be described as spontaneous three-dimensional sketches, all holding ideas and posibilities for large scale works. Ranging from simple tools, absurd figures, abstract forms and architectural structures, these objects have been transferred into one material and scale - a conflict between ornamentality, function, decoration and the grotesque, constituting a wierdy animated landscape of situations. For further information please contact the gallery: www.hiddevanseggelen.com.