Esther Stocker — Dirty Geometry — Alberta Pane Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 10 → October 15, 2011

Panorama 09/11 Un tour d'horizon à chaud des expositions parisiennes de septembre. Mis à jour chaque semaine.

Alberta Pane Gallery presents the first solo show in France of the internationally renowned artist Esther Stocker. Esther Stocker’s work principally consists of paintings and installations in an abstract and geometrical perspective, the two genres being closely related to each other. The artist’s installations are three dimensional projections of her paintings, exclusively realised with a limited palette of black, grey and white. Could they be described as spatial, sculptural paintings or rather as pictorial spaces? Esther Stocker breaks the genres of art. Occupying the floor, the walls and the ceiling, she creates her own structural space inside of Alberta Pane Gallery.

As an heir to historical art movements such as Geometric abstraction, Gruppo T and 1960s’ Op art, Esther Stocker continues the research in vision and perception of space in a social and contemporary approach, also being influenced by new technologies.
The creation of her pieces is inseparably connected to a highly elaborated mathematical discourse, an essential part of her artistic method. The artist’s reflexion is focused on the question: “How is a perfect system imperfect in reality?” Her geometric structures are based upon eternally self-repeating modules that create a seemingly ordered visual rhythm, to which the artist adds aberrations in order to generate an adjacent but new rhythm. This introduction of deviation in the optical balance, similar to 16th century’s mannerist architectural approach, creates surprise and emotion through the purposeful disruption of order and plane dimension.

Inside of this new space conceived by Esther Stocker, the visitor is a geometrical and thus mathematical element, who constitutes integral part of the work itself. He is invited to question his points of reference and to redefine his position according to the phrase: “What I don’t know about space”, which has been the title of Ether Stocker’s exposition at Museum 52 London in 2008. The artist talks about “existential mathematics”, which define our personal and collective environments. Her abstract works are connected to the private and the social spheres; they are metaphors for a society where small disruptions are sensible to destabilize the regulated order.

Born at Schlanders, Italy in 1974, Esther Stocker has studied at the Fine Art Academies of Vienna and Brera-Milan, as well as at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She regularly exhibits in museums and art centres throughout Europe (Germany, Italy, France,..) and the US. Among others her work has been shown at the South London Gallery (“Beyond these Walls”) in 2009, at CCNOA of Brussels (“Abstract Thought is a warm puppy”) and at the Museum of Modern Art of the Ludwig foundation in Vienne (“geometrisch betrachtet”) in 2008, at the Galerie im Taxispalast of Innsbruck in 2006 and at AR/GE Kunstgalerie Museum of Bolzano in 2004. In 2011 Esther Stocker presents her solo show “Destino Comune” at MACRO in Rome, she also takes part in the exhibitions “Fünf Räume” of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and “Abstraction/Quotidien” and “Abstraction/Modernité” of CAC Passerelle at Brest.