Günther Herbst

My paintings until recently were a series of work based on homeless shelters that I had been photographing over a number of years. The materials and fibers that made up these shelters, and the way they were at odds with the surrounding architecture or immediate environment was the starting point for a series of work that soon departed from the premise of ‘studies’. I appropriated a language of history and contemporary painting practices and used these as a transparent medium in order to comment on the subject matter from a different perspective.

I am in a transition phase at the moment having stripped the work back to purely formal painting issues. The work still has its origin in photography. Within these images I look for grids and patterns, which remind me of the work of other artists. My work has long been concerned with converging a number of different types of space into a single act. It has always been connected with the public arena, or 'social space', specifically that of the violence enacted in public, urban space as both a place of global arrival and terminal resort of the dispossessed. My work focuses on the painterly, two-dimensional space of the canvas as an arena of art-historical techniques and possibilities.

Paintings:

Waterloo Rd. 3 Red Blue White Grey 2009 Oil on canvas 100 x 130 cm

Tottenham Court Rd. 3 Black Blue Red 2009 Acrylic and oil on board 30 x 22 cm

Tottenham Court Rd. 5 Yellow Red Blue Grey 2009 Acrylic and oil on board 50 x 64.5 cm

Waterloo Rd. 4 Red Blue 2010 Acrylic on paper 19 x 25.5 cm

Work in progress New Oxford St. 3 Red White Blue Yellow Black 2010 Oil and acrylic on board 47.5 x 69.5 cm

 

Sam Basu

Treignac Projet 2010 Archive. 

1. International Cabaret Cycle. 

2. July Video Coalition. 

3. New International School evolution. 

4. Projects October 2010

Technique and material:
A4, paper mounted on card. Some with folds to give shallow depth, some direct onto card. Hand tracing of printout through carbon paper of groups and individual names.
Notes:
The diagrams represent real groups that I have been involved in creating or work with through the artist run project Treignac Projet. I am not presenting the formations of the groups as my work; this leads to too many problems in relation to the other people involved in the collaborations. Instead, I was thinking of them as an archive of the evolving groups, and as a file record. (Four simple ones like the 3rd image down, were used as secondary gallery commentary (and not as official art ) in a show that work from some of these groups was shown in. )
I think they have the quality of sketches and notes, perhaps there is something educational about them, perhaps a little sci-fi?

"If you want to create a space for innovation, you won't get far by cloistering yourself away from the world and waiting for inspiration to hit you. 

CHANCE FAVOURS THE CONNECTED MIND".  

from a book by Steven Johnson called  Where Good Ideas Come From.