early dawning
Robert Dowling, Carsten Fock, Marita Fraser, Ryan Mosley

Curated by Anna Ebner
opening: 15.09.2009, 19 Uhr
exhibition: 16.09.2009 – 30.10.2009

Press Release

sunday morning, praise the dawning
its just a restless feeling by my side
early dawning, sunday morning
its just the wasted years so close behind
(Quote “Sunday Morning” by The Velvet Underground)

The engholm engelhorn gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition “early dawning”, which combines four different concepts of painting. Ryan Mosley’s works reminds us of frozen dream-sequences: beans have faces, wear hats and smoke pipes. Layers of paint appear through the surface; at other points on the canvas they are completely covered – thereby the painting becomes a kind of multiplicity of the different layers. Robert Dowling’s black monochrome work appears simple at the first sight. Triangles made of cut and assembled canvas build a plain, which works like a dark three-dimensional kaleidoscope caused by the observer’s movement and changes in the light. His painting is reminiscent of sculpture, not only because of the use of fibreglass, but the work seems to occupy the space through the optical illusion. The installations of Marita Fraser correspond more directly with the room of the gallery. The installation questions the alleged neutrality of the white walls of the classical exhibition space. Fraser’s works deal with the issue of this space, as well as the materiality of painting. In some of her works she deals with scientific images to use them in a new and playfull way. She is asking how perception, the consideration of painting and painting itself is working.
In contrast, Carsten Fock guides the beholder’s sight not around or through his works, but directly into the depth of the canvas. His works, always floating between abstraction and figuration, combining plain and line, are a gloomy translation of classical art history themes, such as Christian iconography and landscape painting according to abstract expressionism and the romanticism, into the present. What unites all works in “early dawning” is the topic of borders and transitions; they all are floating between rationalism and emotionality. The only moment, in which our cognition is not yet subordinated to our sober every day existence, is this moment of first waking up in the morning. Everything which is possible in dreams, is recognizable for seconds, before it disappears into the sub consciousness, and simultaneously we integrate ourselves again into the systems and constructions of the rational world.

For further information regarding the exhibition
please contact Kerstin Engholm or Anna Ebner at +43 1 585 7337.