Extended Process viewpoints

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Essays by Karl England, Guido Winkler and Gabriele Evertz

Written to accompany the exhibition ‘Extended Process’, March 2017.

EXTENDED PROCESS (Part 2) | Guido Winkler

Many artists are probably familiar with unfinished experiments that wander around the studio, hang unfinished for ages on a wall, or are left alone in a dark drawer. Those left-overs that remain unfinished, but are still too interesting to throw away or abandon completely.

Finishing some of these early experiments feels like a welcome opportunity for an exhibition in a chest of drawers. The title of this exhibition is Extended Process, and is being curated by Saturation Point’s Patrick Morrissey and Hanz Hancock, in conjunction with APT projects.

Opening a drawer is a nice way to reveal a work. A closer, fresh look. It can be a more intimate way of seeing than publicly viewing a work of art on a wall. With this in mind, I have chosen these works for this exhibition.

Drawer one shows an early, glued, very small painting. It might be from 2010. I glued two parts of wood together because I must have liked the wood pattern. In essence it’s nothing special, but it became the start of something new.

The second drawer shows a work I made for Sugar Mountain in the Van den Berge gallery in Goes. It was one of the first wooden, folded works I made, and the first one I presented in a gallery.

('Sugar Cube', acrylic on wood, 30x30cm)

The third drawer contains two 3D-printed, painted models. The left is a print from a 3D-designed object. My first ever. The right object is actually a 3D-scan of a real painting, reprinted and then repainted. They are from 2016, finished during January and February 2017.

Drawer four is showing another try. I started this one in 2012, and repainted it for this exhibition in February 2017.

Untitled (Be), acrylics on wood, 36x43cm (2017).

The fifth drawer contains a new painting as object. (Jan 2017), Untitled, acrylics on wood, 35/23x37cm.

Drawer six: One of the many (X), acrylics and alkyd on wood, 31x31cm (2015). Most of this series have been sold or swapped. This particular one, which I made in Sydney for the exhibition IS comes to SNO (Sydney Biennale off-programme) but did not show. Now it's the time.

The wall painting is based on the same motif as the works in drawers two, three and four. This work blends in the exhibition at Brigitte Parusel's APT Studio, temporary.

SLUICE | Karl England, 2016

As an artist-run project, Sluice exists to create platforms that expound and promote other artist-run initiatives. Sluice began life in 2011 in London as an art fair for artists/curators and emerging galleries. The fair’s aim is to invert the dominant art fair paradigm by operating on a non-profit basis, thereby making it affordable for artistic activity that is usually excluded from participating in the cultural discourse generated during the art fair season.

In our first year, in 2011, the New York gallerist Stephanie Theodore brought her gallery Theodore:Art to Sluice_2011; in our second year (Sluice_2013) Theodore:Art and four other Bushwick galleries participated (Parallel, Wayfarers, Et Al and Schema). As our Brooklyn contingent grew, independently, back in the States, Theodore:Art and Centotto Gallery had been developing the Bushwick Expo idea. At Sluice_2013 we held a panel talk entitled 'Why Bushwick, Why Now?’' which looked at how Bushwick had sprung up as the newest enclave for artist- and curator-run projects in New York. After the fair Centotto and Theodore:Art invited Sluice to partner with them in creating the Bushwick expo.

With the aim of using the growing relationship between the Bushwick scene and the network Sluice had nurtured, it was decided that it would be mutually beneficial to make the expo a truly international exercise. Essentially, Sluice would manage the expo and coordinate all the international visiting galleries. Centotto and Theodore:Art were responsible for coordinating the Bushwick host galleries.

AN INDUCTION | Gabriele Evertz

I am interested in the sensation and perception of colour interaction. The history and theory of color serve as organizing tools. Simple geometric elements function as basic formal units, or color situations.

Colour requires a vessel. Bands, stripes, and diagonals are among the most neutral shapes available to me. In visual experience, we expect symmetry. A centre is established when two main structural lines cross. It becomes the basis for subjective action, spreading energy equally through the visual field, because the viewer’s glance coincides with the axis of perspective. To counteract this element of stability, less predictable breaks along a line can be employed to induce a state of unrest.

Of all of the visual elements, colour is the most unstable factor, depending on its placement, size, and quantity. Whereas shapes always hold their identity - for instance, a diamond is still seen as a square tipped on its point - colour releases a dynamic force that seems to advance or recede in the pictorial field. It creates afterimages and appears to shift colour appearance. Thus, while a linear action in time traverses the space of a picture, colour contrasts or assimilations are experienced in duration.

This series of investigations explores the balance between both centric and eccentric forces. In planning my work, I intentionally keep the presence of the observer in mind. The sudden perception of colour shifts and the sensation of intensive light emanations, which come with immersive viewing, are the rewards that the painting bestows on us. Vision, feeling, and thought come together in the perceptive viewer, who becomes a partner, thus completing the meaning of the painting.

Guido Winkler

Gabriele Evertz