translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
110711: Galerie Martin Janda Raum aktueller Kunst Jakob Kolding – The Uncertainty of Stability
Galerie Martin Janda Raum aktueller Kunst
Jakob Kolding – The Uncertainty of Stability
24.06.11 – 30.07.11
Solace for enlightenment’s consolation
Prior to the era of enlightenment man was at the mercy of space and religion to find comfort for the imposition of space. Enlightenment allowed the gradual emergence of a position that made the desires for comfort and stability in day-to-day life more easily attainable. As measuring the world progressed, objects such as lightning rods, heating power stations, cars and many other things could be manufactured and utilized.
In his third solo exhibition at Martin Janda’s Gallery, the Danish artist Jakob Kolding demonstrates, with melancholic humour, that space, despite human interventions, is no less complex than it was. The two large works at the right of the entrance are predominantly in black – the colour of infinite space and deepest holes. In “The Night on its Back” (140x100 Lambda print, 2011) screen copies of a sitting headless man in a white shirt holding a cigarette in his left hand and wearing beautiful woollen socks together with a leopard, an eye surrounded by skin and an eyebrow, and 13 different sized white paper shavings are collaged in such a way that they resemble a pigeon seen from above. But naming this form “pigeon” is an insecure approach. What does someone who has the night on his back carry on his stomach? The day or the mattress on which he sleeps?
In another work, paper shavings fly out of opened hands – one of them depicting an illustration of mushrooms (Untitled, 140x100, Lambda print 2011). “City 2” (collage and illustration on paper, 66x102, 2011), presents a dancing dissipating male figure with a yellowish aerial view of a dock integrated in his face. All 21 works are collages – a formal method amalgamating various image spaces and thereby combining what should, according to logical measurement principles of the world, be kept apart. Some of the smaller works, presented as diptychs, play with the contrasts of black and white, show men in a formal formation, yet in rotor blade-like clips and contrasting corners, or hands attempting to balance skyscrapers or support unstable towers. In three instances one can find a portrait of the Argentinian surrealist Julio Cortázar in different contexts – the title of the exhibition was taken from that of a long short story by Corázar.
Prior to the era of enlightenment, mankind was mainly frightened by incommensurability. Today, in a time in which cucumbers are ploughed in masses to protect mankind from unidentified diseases, it’s relieving when immenseness comes together and does nothing but point to incommensurable spaces in which one may practice taking a walk.
By Charles Nebelthau
Galerie Martin Janda Raum aktueller Kunst
1010 Vienna, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tel: +43 1 585 73 71
Fax: +43 1 585 73 72
Email: officex@raumaktuellekunst.at
http://www.martinjanda.at
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sat 11 a.m. – 3 p.m
110711
Galerie Martin Janda
1010 Wien, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tel: +43 1 585 73 71, Fax: +43 1 585 73 72
Email: galerie@martinjanda.at
http://www.martinjanda.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa: 11-16h
Galerie Martin Janda
1010 Wien, Eschenbachgasse 11
Tel: +43 1 585 73 71, Fax: +43 1 585 73 72
Email: galerie@martinjanda.at
http://www.martinjanda.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di-Fr: 11-18h
Sa: 11-16h