Galerie Christian Lethert is proud to
announce that Jorinde Voigt is shortlisted
for the Future Generation Art Prize at
PinchukArtCentre, Kiev.
The
PinchukArtCentre presents an exhibition of the 21 artists
shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010. The
group show features works submitted for the competition as
well as brand new works specially made for the show. It will
open on October 30 and will last till January 9, 2011.
Following an open, free and democratic application procedure
via Internet a Selection Committee of seven competent and
global art-professionals selected a shortlist. Out of more
than 6000 applications from 125 countries on all continents,
20 artists were chosen. The 21st nominee is Artem Volokytin,
the winner of the first PinchukArtCentre Prize 2009, a
contemporary art prize awarded to Ukrainian artists younger
than 35 years.
Jorinde Voigt (born in 1977 in
Frankfurt am Main) has been developing conceptual drawings on
paper since 2002, referring to them as notations and scores,
and which form the core of her multi-faceted oeuvre consisting
of photo works, performances, objects and (sound)
installations. In her, for the most part, oversized notations,
Voigt constructs an ordering system, as complex as it is
individual, in order to survey invisible processes in
our present day. Whereas in her early drawings Voigt was
searching for a way of writing that reacted as dynamically and
lively as reality itself, the most recent drawings in
her recent exhibition "Superdestinations" at Galerie
Christian Lethert, Cologne represent a reduced writing system
of drawing-like codes.
The
pages display abstract lines that have been spontaneously
drawn in colored pencil and scattered across the surface of
the paper. The strokes form circles, rectangles, triangles,
squares, straight, curvy, and zigzag lines. Only the titles of
the works give us any indication of the origin of the
notations. This is a concrete fixing of positions using the
parameters of form and color, which Voigt synchronizes in
Superdestinations: The object viewed is reduced to its
simplest basic visual form by the artist at the moment of
perception and then noted with the corresponding color. Just
as a key on a keyboard produces a specific tone, a colored
pencil corresponds to the color scale 1-120 regarding the
colorfulness of the respective object. In addition to the
location, time also functions as a variable of the image
production. Each stroke has been provided with a number that
documents the succession of the objects
perceived.
It is
possible to draw a parallel from Superdestinations to
Voigt’s first sketch-like notations. In 2003, the artist
traveled to Indonesia, where the three-part series
Indonesia was carried out. Voigt used graph paper for
the notation of her precise linear arrangement. Sitting in
street cafés, she noted in the form of frequencies the sounds
of motorbikes passing, the rising wind, Indonesian pop music
and passers-by in conversation. Whereas Voigt exclusively
dealt with acoustics in Indonesia, in
Superdestinations her
concern is exclusively for
taking an optical inventory of the environment. A further key
to the artist’s studies in perception is the Installation
Botanic Code, in which Voigt examined her own
perception of colors during walks in botanic gardens.
According to an algorithm, the most strongly perceived colors,
recorded in an order of one to five, are translated into
proportional color fields and transferred to aluminum rods.
The result is a code, which breaks down the information with
respect to color, proportion, performance, time, season and
norm.
Botanic Code, as well as Superdestination,
translates the human brain’s linear structure of perception
into a parallel arrangement. An unusual side-by-side of
individual moments comes about, fanning out before our eyes in
a simultaneousness of the present. The overlappings and
intersections (accumulation) produce a rhythm (interference)
that extends throughout Voigt’s drawings. By repeating and
varying the same unchanging procedure of notation, the
inherent rhythm is pushed on.
Jorinde Voigt
Grosse Melodie / Horizont, 2010
Ink,
Pencil, Polychromos on Paper
203 x
300 cm
Courtesy: Galerie Christian Lethert,
Cologne
In
the element "Horizon" the theme of the elementary horizontal
line upfolds to the color spectrum of possible horizon colors.
The side-by-side of the possible lines results in an
idiosyncratic complex of colors, which defines the possible
scope of colors. This element bands together in the new works
with themes of: melody, caesura, rotation, territory,
continental border, center, water, oil, gas, electricity,
direction, construction, deconstruction, temporal countdown
and count-up loops, position, and double identical
position.
Superdestinations is characterized by
ambivalences:
linearity and nonlinearity, specificity and
non-specificity, writing and image. Even though the notations
primarily concentrate on self-perception, nevertheless the
location is an essential picture subject. As a rule, a
location displays specific features of identity, whereas in
Voigt’s drawings it is simplified to a homogenous system of
lines. The result of this unconventional manner of writing is
something unknown. Reminded of children’s, blind or scribbled
drawings, we see something not yet defined: It is a stage
before the categorization of image and writing. Intuitively,
beyond emotion and intellect, the colored abbreviations reveal
primal archaic forms of human communication, such as those
examined in anthropological and neurological
studies.
(Lisa
Sintermann)
Jorinde Voigt
Horizont II, 2010
Ink,
Pencil, Polychromos on Paper
147 x
220 cm
Courtesy: Galerie Christian Lethert,
Cologne
For
further information please contact
Galerie Christian
Lethert
Antwerpener Straße
4
D-50672
Cologne
Germany
T +49 (0)221 35 60
590
