Silke Otto-Knapp: Present time exercise
& Polaroids: Mapplethorpe
4 JULY TO 13 SEPTEMBER - FREE ADMISSION
SILKE OTTO-KNAPP: PRESENT TIME EXERCISE
4 JULY TO 13 SEPTEMBER - FREE ADMISSION
Upper Gallery
This is the first major exhibition in the UK of the London-based artist Silke Otto-Knapp. Devised as a single installation for Modern Art Oxford’s Upper Gallery, the exhibition presents twelve paintings produced by Otto-Knapp between 2005 and 2009.
Silke Otto-Knapp works with watercolour and gouache on canvas, repeatedly building up and dissolving the surface to create paintings of subtle effect. Drawing on a photographic archive of visual sources that refer to the spatial staging of the formal garden and the choreography of modern dance, Otto-Knapp’s tautly constructed yet mutable compositions are rendered in layers of diluted pigment and metallic silver monotones. Recent paintings reveal the artist’s evolving investigations into the construction of pictorial space with a renewed approach to the figure and colour through which more complex narratives emerge.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To coincide with the exhibition, Modern Art Oxford is producing a fully illustrated monograph on Otto-Knapp’s work with essays by the exhibition’s curator Suzanne Cotter and writers Jan Verwoert and Catherine Wood. Published in collaboration with the Walter Philips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Canada.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
POLAROIDS: MAPPLETHORPE
4 JULY TO 13 SEPTEMBER - FREE ADMISSION
Upper and Lower Galleries
This exhibition traces the early use of instant photography by the celebrated and controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 – 1989). Presenting 92 of his Polaroid photographs taken between 1970 and 1975, the exhibition offers a fascinating insight into Mapplethorpe’s formative years.
In the early 1970s, Mapplethorpe lived in New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel with the rock singer Patti Smith. It was there that filmmaker Sandy Daley lent Mapplethorpe her Polaroid camera and he began his first photographic experiments.
Intimate in scale, the spontaneity of these early photographs contrasts starkly with his highly stylised images for which he later became famous. Signature elements of Mapplethorpe’s later work are visible in these early nudes, flower studies and still lifes, and his portraits of lovers and friends including Helen Marden, Sam Wagstaff, Marianne Faithfull, and Patti Smith. Poignantly simple, they range in tone from tender to provocative.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated book with an essay by curator Sylvia Wolf.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The exhibition was organised by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York.
Polaroids: Mapplethorpe is curated by Sylvia Wolf, Director, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle.
Image: Robert Mapplethorpe, Untitled (Patti Smith), 1973.
Monochromatic dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid). Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. ©Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Links
ARTIST ROOMS: Robert Mapplethorpe
Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, 25 April - 27 June 2009
Robert Mapplethorpe: Perfection in Form
Firenze, Galleria dell'Accademia, 26 May - 27 September 2009