Degrees of separation — Commissariat: Rod Barton — Jeanrochdard Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 22 → July 27, 2013

Exhibition in partnership with Palais de Tokyo, as part of the event Nouvelles Vagues, with the support of the Comité professionnel des galeries d’art.

Claiming it is a Modernist conceit to stick to a chosen medium, the young artists outlined here resist style and media specificity. Rather than referring back to a specific, linear dialog, instead these artists work dispersively, covering a wealth of positions. With consideration to how mass production and the sourcing of digital material from the internet speeds up time and relocates space, these artists choose to work in multiple mediums and styles. Reflecting an informal idea of what historical and contemporary painting is or could be, they reassemble and reshape the painters’ language of Modernism. For them works are not necessarily ‘painted’, as whilst painting is painting, it is simultaneously something else too. The purpose of this exhibition is to explore the subtexts and links between the artists’ practices, even though the individual’s work may appear in multiple manifestations. Exploring how an audience might make sense of disparate works by an individual artist, Degrees of Separation questions the persistence of commercial trends, whilst expanding the constraints of stylistic interpretation.

Gabriele Beveridge explores the representational qualities of collaged and printed visual ephemera. Expanding upon this mixed media practice, she includes aleatory mark-making exacted across everyday objects and mineral rich forms. James Clarkson’s interests lay in the relationship between artists’ practice and production specifically in the context of the contemporary environment. Clarkson’s work is a series of ideas or investigations into and around commonplace material and art history.

Oliver Osborne’s work includes elements of monochrome abstraction, collage and still life painting. From painting a rubber plant to using found cartoon imagery, he asserts that a change in form does not entail a change in tone. David Ostrowski’s unplanned happenings in the studio are his means towards new knowledge; his process is an ongoing struggle to unlearn and rediscover, learning in so doing not just about painting but also reframing his understanding of beauty. His painterly vocabulary equally develops from accidents of form, taking unforeseen lines that appear and recreating them in future works.

Max Ruf’s work departs from the operation of the image and its relationship to landscape, transformation and materiality. From these concerns he establishes an array of frameworks. Journeys, picture books, bronze casts, plein air paintings, toner transfers and slideshows acts as placeholders that lend themselves to be recontextualised within a contingent narrative.

Chris Succo works with a variety of techniques including photography, silkscreen, sculptural elements and abstract oil paintings. These techniques are modified and reconfigured to achieve a recognizable visual language. With these processes he produces unique pieces sometimes belonging to a specific series of works. Failures and rules of his processes create new ideas and images to widen his practice.