Karl Haendel — The Competition Myth — Yvon Lambert Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 15 → April 20, 2013

The Competition Myth features a new series of Karl Haendel’s signature monumental graphite drawings, with its central piece, Down Box, the largest single drawing he has ever made.

Karl Haendel’s precise graphite works first strike us with their technical brilliance and realism. His practice plays with notions of scale, utilizing it for dramatic effect and enabling viewers to become aware of their bodies in space. He “understands the effect of differently scaled images on the static scale of the human body. The idea of scale suggests that there is a standard size of a certain thing and it’s noticeable when you deviate from it.”

For each of his shows, Haendel brings together images from various sources. His purpose is to pose questions to the viewer, letting them provide their own associative meanings. Haendel’s practice takes a semiotic bend, using elements from media and the public realm to present us a portrait of American culture, mirroring the culture’s own image with the images that it itself produces.