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until 26.04. | #4629ARTatBerlin | Taubert Contemporary currently shows the exhibition „Material Glitch“ by the artists Gabriele Basch, Liza Dieckwisch, Julia Gruner, Toulu Hasani, Analia Saban, Céline Vahsen.
What do painters do? One answer would be: they paint with paint on canvas. The artists in the Material Glitch exhibition counter this simplification by experimenting with the material of painting. Their practices include: pouring, layering, cutting, spraying and weaving. Despite the use of these artisanal techniques, they do not strive for perfect manufacture, but welcome distortions, shifts, recesses, substitutions, chance. The supposed errors in the work process become productive constituents of the image production and consciously subvert the relationship between color, image and image carrier.
Celine Vahsen’s (*1987 in BEL) art focuses on the canvas. She weaves this medium herself using old techniques and threads dyed with natural dyes – a fact that links her works to the socio-cultural history of textile works. Pink and white tones create a vibrating surface, or are themselves the surface, as the content of the picture and the surface are inextricably intertwined.
Analia Saban | Woven Reflected Radial Gradient as Weft (Center, Cadmium Red Medium), 2024 | woven acrylic paint and linen thread on panel | 62 x 59 cm | 24 x 24 inches
Analia Saban (*1980 in ARG) also weaves – but uses dried red acrylic paint as a horizontal warp thread that is interwoven with canvas threads. A second work, which is generated from light-colored structures on a black background, was cut into paper using a laser, which was then applied to thick black ink. Both testify to Saban’s long-standing exploration of art as a product that oscillates between material and metaphysical processes.
An intuitive ordering system of nested squares forms the basis of Toulu Hassani’s (*1984 in IRN) works. To achieve the color gradients within the units, she sprays paint onto aluminum plates with an airbrush. Viewers are denied a fixed point for their vision; instead, the eye can lose itself in complex spaces in which the surfaces tilt. This casts doubt on where a front and a back of the surface manifests itself.
Julia Gruner | Lazy Painting, 2022 | acrylic paint, nettle, packaging materials | 78 x 88 x 28 cm | 31 x 35 x 11 inches
Julia Gruner’s (*1984 in Ger) paintings from the Phobic Encounters series are the result of intensive research into the interplay of various oils and water-based paints. Gruner uses the fact that both components repel each other to create images that result from layered crack structures. Gruner’s patient, albeit unintentional, coming together gives rise to an intense color sediment, which is first fixed on a canvas and then on a stretcher frame.
While the aforementioned artists consciously use the panel painting format, two positions dispense with the image carrier altogether and react to the space, as they do not follow a fixed presentation method.
Liza Dieckwisch’s (*1989 in DE) Drippings define the paint itself as painting and the wall as the picture ground. They are created by pouring silicone that is colored with pigments. The solidified trace of color directs the viewer’s gaze – quite unusually – from the wall to the floor, where the painterly play of color comes together in puddles. Her abstract, seemingly artificial works are rooted in cooking experiments and a close examination of food materials and plastics.
Gabriele Basch’s (*1964 in Ger) works are the result of many years of finding images with a cutter. With the knife she reacts intuitively to the color with which her synthetic paper is painted on both sides. The free hanging of the result shows that both sides of the picture are considered equal: Color shines through the cutouts onto the other side, or individual elements curve around each other. The individual forms dissolve – and yet the whole presents itself as a pictorial counterpart.
– Romina Dümler
Opening: Friday, 14th March 2025, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibitions dates: Friday, 14th. March– Saturday, 26th April 2025
To the Gallery
Title image caption: Material Glitch, Céline Vahsen, Untitled 2023–2024, 94 x 94 cm, 37 x 37 inches (detail), Recycled wool & organic cotton, natural pigments, Manuel weaving and dyeing,
Group show Material Glitch – Taubert Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
