) |
Barbara Roth |
The Baukunst Galerie opens on Wednesday, the 2nd of December 2009 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. the remarkable solo show “ocean dust“ with new works of the Swiss artist and sculptor Barbara Roth. In the gallery her art was primarily presented in the summer of 2000 in the form of spring steel sculptures. In 2005 the subsequent solo exhibition included chrome steel sculptures, wooden objects and nitro prints. The current show does not only present brass sculptures but also photos and delicate drawings and paintings in watercolor, graphite and acrylic on cardboard, wood and zinc plates representing an impressive cross section of the experimental spectrum of Barbara Roth’s œuvre.
Barbara Roth was born in 1950 in Basel and lives and works in Zurich. After her architectural studies from 1971 to 1974 at the ETH in Zurich she was a student of the sculptor Peter Meister in Zurich from 1979 to 1980. Roth received multiple art scholarships and realized several installations in public space. Her works were exhibited amongst others at the Museum Helmhaus in Zurich in 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Esfahan in Iran in 2006 and the “die Halle“ in Langnau am Albis in 2007. In 2008 the Tokyo Publishing House and the gallery Shigeru Yokota organized a major solo exhibition of Barbara Roth’s works in Tokyo.
In the 90s Barbara Roth put the emphasis of her art on her interest in spatial problems and the exceeding reduction of her formal vocabulary. Her works are more references to imaginary worlds and visionary steric concepts than models of precise architectures. Beside sculptural drawings of spring and chrome steel batons she created wooden cubes and wall panels with linear notes of movement and space alluding to blueprints and game boards.
In contrast to the wall panels the brass sculptures of the current exhibition are solely presented in a horizontal position on wooden racks and pedestals. Thereby the spectator is allowed to look at them from a bird’s eye view, which was inspired by the view out of the window during an air trip as the title “Architektur II (Flug) / architecture II (flight)“ refers to. The first group of works on the pedestals with its linear engravings and accurately mounted plates and cubes on the surface reminds on minimalist models of architecture in an urban landscape (“architectural landscape“ 2008). Either from a close or an afar vision the sculpture’s multiple reduced scale opens up a new distant perspective of space and exposes the graphical character of a landscape. Their strict reduction elevates the fantasy of the spectator to utopian dimensions and serve as a projection field for own ideas of possible spaces.
The title “Messgerät / measurement instrument“ (2007) of the second group of works on the racks refers to the active alignment, filtering and selecting of visual information. These brass sculptures with its quadrants and semicircles are inspired by cartography, which always had a considerable effect on our construction of reality by structuring and mapping knowledge according to specific criteria as religion, politics or economics. Roth makes use of the main cartographic characteristics – the semicircle of the globe, its projection on the plain, the system of the longitudes and latitudes and the bench marks for orientation and adjustment – and thereby the “Messgerät” refers as a “pars pro toto“ to the history of the surveying of our world and its main influence on the image of ourselves and our world.
In the presented filigree drawings in graphite, watercolor and acrylic on cardboard and wood Barbara Roth also utilizes segments of circles and space coordinates, generates raised structures by paper collage and imitates the glossy, silky polished surface of maps by the application of shellac. In poetic delineation from the ancient masters she modifies the outline of the continents (”antarctic“ 2008), drifts them apart, weightless like clouds above the ocean and befogged by a blue green dust. This atmospheric aspect, where the exhibition title alludes to, also applies to her photos, which were created on her journeys to Iran (2006) and Japan (2008). In form of miniatures they do not image concrete places but rather the alternating appearance of clouds, waves, roads and mountains due to time and weather. Thereby the shapes of hills and water in acrylic on zinc plates constitute the link between her photos, drawings and sculptures.
It is characteristic for Barbara Roth, that she configures the quintessence of the perceived sensations and information. Her creation of an own, very reductive, sign and classification system provides space for our own projections. Thereby her oeuvre clarifies and playfully questions our perception as an intelligent, active construction process.
MORE EXHIBITIONS
