SALVATORE ARANCIO
ANDERS CLAUSEN
DICK EVANS
VALIE EXPORT
SIMONE GILGES
LARS LAUMANN
NEDKO SOLAKOV

Curated by DICK EVANS.

Foxy Production presents NUL, a group exhibition curated by London-based artist Dick Evans. Nul brings together seven European artists, including Evans, Salvatore Arancio, Anders Clausen, VALIE EXPORT, Simone Gilges, Lars Laumann, and Nedko Solakov, whose work relates in differing ways to loss, reduction or vacancy. Combined, the works in Nul produce an uncanny sense of dissolution.

Salvatore Arancio's photo etchings depict bizarre natural phenomena in strange ancient landscapes. Collages of the old and new, they trade on the aesthetic pleasures of visual histories. They embody a fantasy of Gothic nothingness that is underscored by a surreal desire.

Anders Clausen's sculptural heads on wooden pedestals elicit a curious familiarity, with their combination of the allegorical and the historical. His zombie-like figures have reduced their art historical references - to Jacob Epstein, Ben Nicholson, and Dieter Roth - to a humorous yet subtle amalgam.

Dick Evans' Plexiglas boxes - titled by their dimensions - consider the possibility of absolute zero. These almost empty vitrines contain remnants of works that have been abandoned by the artist, left to gather dust in a corner of his studio for a year. Hygiene products, wax, candles and dust produce landscapes of comic emptiness that are at once a portrait, an environmental calendar, and an image in negative of his studio.

VALIE EXPORT's sculpture Dead People Don't Scream pointedly references an existential interpretation of nothingness, visualizing the experience of an emotion so extreme that a face becomes a terrifying vacuum. Her photographic series, untitled, presents stony figures intertwined with angular architectural structures, creating a dynamic tension between the construction of identity and its dissolution.

Simone Gilges produces very particular and concise arrangements of photographs and objects. For Nul, Gilges places re-photographed images, fabrics, and found objects in enigmatic relationships with one another. She presents a constellation that is mysterious, monstrous, conjured and ethereal. The work's elements coalesce in a psychological scene of both curiosity and closure.

Lars Laumann's Hatful of Cocteau is a screen-print of an article from an issue of La Liberation devoted posthumously to Jean Cocteau. It includes an image of a man with an illustration from the artist's publication Le Livre Blanc tattooed on his shoulder; the same image was also used on Morrissey's Hatful of Hollow album cover. Laumann's work focuses on how images and objects can act as both romantic connectors and empty ciphers.

Nedko Solakov's Personal Parts drawings combine body parts with poetic writing about them, engendering strange insights into the human body as a whole. Simultaneously comedic, macabre and enlightening, they are dark fables about people reduced to their elements.

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Photography by Mark Woods.

NUL

May 15 - June 20, 2008
Reception May 15, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Installation Views


Works

HATFUL OF COCTEAU

LARS LAUMANN, HATFUL OF COCTEAU, 2008

PERSONAL PARTS #4

NEDKO SOLAKOV, PERSONAL PARTS #4, 2004

01-12

VALIE EXPORT, 01-12, 2001

A VIEW OF A CAVE CUT BY EROSION IN THE VERY THINK LAYERS OF ASH

SALVATORE ARANCIO, A VIEW OF A CAVE CUT BY EROSION IN THE VERY THINK LAYERS OF ASH, 2006

CONTOUR OF THE MOUNTAIN FOLLOWING ITS COLLAPSE

SALVATORE ARANCIO, CONTOUR OF THE MOUNTAIN FOLLOWING ITS COLLAPSE, 2006

FLUID THROBBING VIOLENTLY BURST INTO A FRENZIED ROARING POOL OF SLUSH

SALVATORE ARANCIO, FLUID THROBBING VIOLENTLY BURST INTO A FRENZIED ROARING POOL OF SLUSH, 2006

PROFIL 1 (wall piece)

ANDERS CLAUSEN, PROFIL 1 (wall piece), 2007

UNTITLED #26C (white head)

ANDERS CLAUSEN, UNTITLED #26C (white head), 2007

UNTITLED #8C (black head)

ANDERS CLAUSEN, UNTITLED #8C (black head), 2007

PURPLE BEACH BALL

DICK EVANS, PURPLE BEACH BALL, 2008

PERSONAL PARTS #2

NEDKO SOLAKOV, PERSONAL PARTS #2, 2004

HEADS- APHARESE

VALIE EXPORT, HEADS- APHARESE, 2002

84 x 277 x 128

DICK EVANS, 84 x 277 x 128, 2008

355 x 432 x 309

DICK EVANS, 355 x 432 x 309, 2008

165 x 712 x 172

DICK EVANS, 165 x 712 x 172, 2008

216 x 383 x 261

DICK EVANS, 216 x 383 x 261, 2008

133 x 331 x 189

DICK EVANS, 133 x 331 x 189, 2008

PERSONAL PARTS #1

NEDKO SOLAKOV, PERSONAL PARTS #1, 2004

PERSONAL PARTS #10

NEDKO SOLAKOV, PERSONAL PARTS #10, 2004

MATERIALPROBE II (SEIDE)

SIMONE GILGES, MATERIALPROBE II (SEIDE), 2008


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