MANOR GRUNEWALD, VERA KOX - BASIC PRECAUTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS BE OBSERVED | eternal optimist
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MANOR GRUNEWALD, VERA KOX - BASIC PRECAUTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS
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Tue, 2015-01-27 19:57
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Since January 16th DUVE Berlin art space hosts " Basic Precautions Should Always Be
Observed" , with paintings by Belgian Manor Grunewald and sculptures by German Vera Kox
produced specially for this show. What unites Grunewald and Kox is their shared interest in material
transformations applied to everyday objects; the exhibition title refers to the precautionary remark to be
found in instruction manuals for industrial products, but which the artists here choose to disregard. By
submitting familiar images and objects of manipulation and experimentation, Grunewald and Kox
transform our understanding of them, investing the everyday with a sense of levity and wonder
wonder.
Vera Kox
Kox’s work draws on an interest in sculptural materiality. Set within an aesthetics of
normative production and emphasising a sensual experience of matter, Kox
transforms industrially produced objects - like raw pot noodles and anti-slip bath mats through a process of casting, manipulating and restructuring. Through these transformative
processes, she plays with our notions of materiality and teases out aesthetic qualities of familiar
objects which might otherwise go unnoticed. In Subtracted bleeds* (*and additives), the abstract
colour-block structures seem pliable and fluid but are in fact solid, creating an interplay
between the visual and the haptic and subtly challenging our preconceptions. Original source
material is distorted and disguised, only to reveal its industrial origin on closer inspection. The
raw and temporary is given priority over the highly finished and monumental. Strategies of
display engage with our sense of movement and inertia: bashed-up blocks of matter are
arranged and tied together in a modular pyramid whose stability is uncertain; a gaping mass
suspended from the ceiling threatens to drop at any moment, like a damoclean sword.
Related Articles
INTERVIEW - MANOR GRUNEWALD
Manor Grunewald considers himself first and foremost a painter, yet the starting point of his
works is often found in printed material, from comics to recipe books, scraps of paper and
plastic, among other production material lying around his studio. This source material is
transformed through an experimental process of copying, enlarging, extraction and digital
manipulation, and subsequently combined with images from the artist’s own extensive pictorial
archive. Untitled (Rennie#08), for instance, uses a cookbook photograph of a chicken breast as
its starting point, transformed to the point of becoming abstract, with only the title (a reference
to the antacid tablet) attesting to its culinary origin. Going beyond the traditions of abstract
minimalist painting, Grunewald’s work is concerned with the dichotomy between original and
reproduction, industrial and hand-made, art and industry. Through his experimental approach to
materials, he investigates the intersection between these multiple fields, and creates a narrative
within the exhibition space which invites viewers to reflect on making, content, and effect of
images present in our everyday lives.
http://www.eternal-optimist.com/section/art/manor-grunewald-vera-kox-basic-precautions-should-always-be-observed
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MANOR GRUNEWALD, VERA KOX - BASIC PRECAUTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS BE OBSERVED | eternal optimist
28/01/15 13:20
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication produced jointly by Manor Grunewald and Vera Kox.
http://www.eternal-optimist.com/section/art/manor-grunewald-vera-kox-basic-precautions-should-always-be-observed
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MANOR GRUNEWALD, VERA KOX - BASIC PRECAUTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS BE OBSERVED | eternal optimist
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MANOR GRUNEWALD, VERA KOX - BASIC PRECAUTIONS SHOULD ALWAYS BE OBSERVED | eternal optimist
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