Untitled, 2007 Acrylic on canvas, 38 3/16 x 70 7/8 in., 97 x 180 cm © the artist Photo: Herbert Boswank, Dresden Courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube (London) Martin Kobe Behind True Symmetry White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to present eight new paintings by the Leipzig-based artist, Martin Kobe. Kobe's grandfather and mother were architects during the German Democratic Republic (GDR) regime. Having grown up in Dresden, Kobe draws from the surrounding socialist urban planning and architecture that dictates form, function and uniformity. Influenced as much by his own collection of architectural blueprints, travel photography and art historical images from Piranesi, De Stijl, Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus, Kobe deconstructs any architectural aspirations and reinvents his own living spaces. Kobe's visionary matrices of uninhabited, yet familiar interiors implode from multiple vanishing points, jutting and traversing in a misleading convergence. The labyrinth of intersecting beams, suspended facades, recessive paneling, blinds, latticework, sloping roofs and broken window frames draws the viewer into a free-flowing space, unbound by reality and temporal limitations. Liberating them from their function, Kobe reconfigures floors for ceilings or walls for windows, playfully suggesting voids, which equally can be read as sheer surface or reflections that converge, yet never meet a horizon. In his catalogue essay Mark Rappolt suggests: "Kobe's paintings are a remarkably true reflection of the way in which we experience space in day-to-day life. We walk down a street, into a corridor, through a doorway, into a room, up to a corner, etc, And then we assemble these fragmentary experiences and impressions to form our own idea of a whole…. a mental map of space through which we have just traveled." Varying in their formats, Kobe's new paintings are fractured and layered with emotional dialectics of colour / light, texture / plane, internal / external, fact / fiction. The palette consists of piquant synthetic tones; cooler greens complement warmer reds or rich magentas, while multi-directional lighting enhances the artificiality of even polished planes or plastic surfaces. Autonomous details such as bridging walkways, balconies and railings slip into areas that remain unresolved. Traces of reworked drawings and gestural mark-making, where the paint has been bled, scratched or rubbed down to the bare canvas reminds us that Kobe's investigations are as much about painting as they are about distorted Utopias. Martin Kobe's solo exhibition entitled "The centre cannot hold" took place earlier this year at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden and has recently been awarded with the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship. Last year he participated in several international exhibitions at Christian Ehrentraut, Berlin, Sammlung Essl, Austria, SAFN Reykjavik, Iceland and the Ariaro Gallery Beijing. A fully illustrated catalogue, with an essay by Mark Rappolt, will accompany the exhibition. Exhibition: 26 October - 24 November 2007 Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 10 am - 6 pm White Cube Hoxton Square 48 Hoxton Square GB-London N1 6PB Telephone +44 (0)20 7930 53 73 Fax +44 020 7749 74 80 www.whitecube.com |
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