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until 26.08. | #1462ARTatBerlin | Galerie Barbara Wien shows from 8th July 2017 the exhibition “All models are wrong, some are useful” by the artist Ester Fleckner.
For her first exhibition with Galerie Barbara Wien, Ester Fleckner presents two new series of woodcut prints entitled All models are wrong, some are useful and Companions 1-5 and concrete sculptures from 2017. The large and unique blackboard-like prints show manifold patterns: complex and seemingly abstract, flawed geometric motifs. It is rather difficult to foresee the outcome of these unfolded forms or the type of architectures which would erect from these odd images. On the floor next to All models are wrong, some are useful, concrete figures appear, creating multiple relationships with the prints. Here it looks like we have the three-dimensional folded realisations of the unfolded polyhedron-forms drawn on the prints.
Polyhedrons are solid geometrical figures with several faces and straight edges. Used in many disciplines, mainly mathematical, they have also been used as a metaphorical tool to explain the human psyche. In the late 19th century, the American psychologist and philosopher William James first wrote of the “complexities of personality, the smouldering emotional fires, the other facets of the character-polyhedrons”. Updated by the thinker and activist Gregg Bordowitz, this conception of identity and behaviour viewed as many-sided is the inspiration for Fleckner’s latest series.
Following this geometrical anthropomorphisms, her figures look too imperfect to be straight geometry, as faulty as humans’ irregularity. Indeed, Fleckner‘s work is hand-driven, through a repetitive approach: she copies by hand perfect polyhedron models. As expected, it results in many imperfections and asymmetries.
Thus, once assembled, Fleckner’s polyhedrons appear to be a collection of bow-legged, unbalanced and crippled forms which are not able to ‘put themselves together’. Handmade vulnerability troubles the geometric logics of the structure, thus preventing an effective interlocking. With her deficient ‘shape-sorters’, Fleckner refuses to match a normalising system of order which disdain chaotic and other complex forms of profusion and intuition. Her undertaking unsettles the mathematical discipline which seeks to delete errors, deviances and uncertainty.
The second series Companions 1-5 brings together a collection of vertical simili-backbones as many bodies’ anatomy with superimposed and therefore blurred grid patterns. Not unlike the polyhedron puzzles in the first series, it is again difficult to imagine exactly which forms these motifs are the unfolded drafts of. In this case they stem from the form of unfolded globes. This time, no plausible folded objects lie on the floor. Fleckner loses us in abstraction in a place where we have difficulty identifying, in others words: through lack of contours, norms and categories.
Another aspect of Fleckner‘s work is the use of language. Often she adds to the unique prints texts and text fragments. Here as well, repetition, mistakes and crossing-out signal her working process.
In an interview with Mathias Danbolt “Fragments of Failure” (2015) Fleckner outlines:
“My interest in abstraction lies in the opportunity it gives to work with alternative languages and existences that relate to very concrete and real questions of the perception of bodies and difference.”
Gauthier Lesturgie
Ester Fleckner
was born in Denmark in 1983. She is currently living in Berlin.
Since she graduated in 2013 from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark, she has had several solo exhibitions in the Danish capital, including in Overgaden Institute of Art in 2016.
She had taken part in numerous group exhibitions such as “SEEABLE/SAYABLE” in Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway (2016), KH7 Artspace, Aarhus, Denmark (2016), “Homosexuality_ies” in Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany (2015) and then in LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster, Germany (2016), National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine (2016), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia (2015), Dalian Art Museum, China (2014) and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2013).
She has been the recipient of numerous grants and prizes including work grants from The Danish Arts Foundation (2014-2017), Aage og Yelva Nimbs Fond (2016), Den Hielmstierne-Rosencroneske Stiftelse (2016), Art Brussels Solo Prize (2016) and Ole Haslunds Kunstnerfond (2015).
Vernissage: Friday, 7th July 2017, 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 8th July to Saturday, 26th August 2017
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Image caption: Ester Fleckner, All models are wrong, some are useful, 2017 (detail)
Exhibitions Berlin Galleries: Ester Fleckner – All models are wrong, some are useful – Galerie Barbara Wien | ART at Berlin
