 Caro Niederer Alba's Birthday New Paintings and Tapestries Hauser & Wirth London is pleased to announce a show of new works by Caro Niederer. Niederer's work encompasses painting, sculpture, photography and video. The starting point for the work is often a found photograph or personal snapshot. A fundamental theme being the transformation of a photographic image through its replication in other media. For the most part photographic images are re-worked as paintings as well as being handed over and fabricated as silk carpets in China. The current exhibition focuses on her carpets, presented alongside three large paintings. Having produced paintings for several years in brownish sepia tones, Niederer now returns to the full use of colour. In the early nineties, Niederer began making small figurative paintings, using imagery borrowed from postcards collected while travelling. More recently the artist refers to snapshots taken abroad or in her local neighbourhood. The subject matter of these photographs are often scenes of everyday life, reflecting a range of interests including ordinary domestic scenes, sporting events, portraits and alpine landscapes. By transferring her source material into other media as with her painting and silk carpets, the artist provokes unexpected interpretations from the viewer. Rather than being self-contained art objects, Niederer's paintings act as open gestures existing between the process of their production and subsequent journeys into worlds beyond the studio. Transformation of ordinary experience continues to be a central theme in the work as Niederer unlocks the relationship between photography and memory. In recent years Niederer has produced a number of paintings using various umber tones to recall early photography and images from another era. These particular paintings are then subjected to another layer of removal by being photographed in situ in a collector's home or office. For this exhibition Niederer has changed her palette and returns to working in colour for the fist time in many years. As with the paintings, the images used in Niederer's carpets undergo a similar process of re-interpretation. Hand-made in a factory near Shanghai, her carpets are fabricated from original source material in such a way that they are subjected to a form of touristic exoticism. By reproducing her motifs over time, Niederer creates delicate connections between her works. She describes this self-reflexivity in an interview with Felicity Lunn: "My practice is like an open spiral that moves with time. My work revolves around the subject of memory and the question of what remains that is valuable". Caro Niederer (b. 1963) continues to live and work in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent solo exhibitions include CAC Málaga (2006), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2006), Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2005), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2005) and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2004). Niederer is the recipient of the Manor Art Prize of the City of St. Gallen (2004). Exhibition January 26 - March 10, 2007 Gallery hours Tues-Sat 10 am - 6 pm Hauser & Wirth London 196A Piccadilly GB-London W1J 9DY Telephone +44 20 7287 2300 Fax +44 20 7287 6600 Email london@hauserwirth.com www.hauserwirth.com |
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