OLGA BALEMA/MARLIE MUL/IZA TARASEWICZ AT CROY NIELSEN / VIENNA

OLGA BALEMA / MARLIE MUL / IZA TARASEWICZ 


15. January – 11. March 2017



Croy Nielsen
Parkring 4
A-1010 VIENNA

 Iza Tarasewicz, Olga Balema






Iza Tarasewicz, Olga Balema



Iza Tarasewicz, Marlie Mul



Olga Balema, Marlie Mul



Marlie Mul






All
images courtesy Croy Nielsen, Vienna / Photo by Georg Petermichl


OLGA
BALEMA, MARLIE MUL, IZA TARASEWICZ
22.01. –
11.03.2017
We are pleased to announce this year’s
first exhibition featuring works by Olga Balema, Marlie Mul, and Iza
Tarasewicz.
The sculptures by Olga Balema belong to
her ongoing series Interior Biomorphic Attachments: amoeba-like
sculptures that shape and are shaped by the room they occupy. Foam has been
folded around metal structures and painted with several layers of latex. An
almost 4 meter long orange version is situated close to the floor where it
ripples along the wall, whereas a white, almost excessively curved structure is
hung relatively high. In their conflation of exterior and interior the artist refers
to these soft-hued biomorphs as “semi-abstract”. Works from this series were
recently on view at Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen Assembly, 2016) and at
Sculpture Center in New York (Puddle, Pothole, Portal, 2014).
The two sculptures by Marlie Mul, each
laconically titled Hammer (2015), feature overdimensioned hammers in red
and green, respectively. Replica is a recurrent issue in Mul’s work (which
includes wooden clubs in papier-mâche and resin puddles, for example), but
these hammers are scaled beyond their purpose (too big and too heavy to be
handled) and rendered in soft and friendly silicone. Deprived of any function,
and alluding to the body in scale and softness, they sit like obsolete objects
in the corner or rest on the floor. Imbued with a comic form of pathos, their
exhaustion or boredom almost call for empathy. The works were originally produced
for the exhibition One, No One, and One Hundred Thousands at Kunsthalle
Wien (2016), in which the sculptures were supposed to be moved around by the
visitors who could mount their own version of the show (curated by Luca Lo
Pinto).
Arena II (2016) by Iza Tarasewicz comprises a 70 m long handmade rope of hemp
fiber and silicone. Hung from the ceiling, the sculpture floats in the air and
marks a territory. In one iteration it appeared to draw an abstracted wavy,
circular shape and on another occasion this loop twisted and draped around the
room, producing a soft and open architecture. Historically the arena was an
enclosure where sports took place, and it still holds true as a place of
recreation and entertainment. But an arena also implies a place for political
activity and debate. The modularity of the rope resembles the flexibility of
the arena, which is affected by the subjectivities inherent within acts of
public communication. Arena I was recently included in the 11th Gwangju
Biennial in Korea.
List of works
Olga Balema
Interior
Biomorphic Attachment (5)
, 2014
Steel,
latex, poly foam
61
x 371 x 31 cm
Unique
Marlie Mul
Hammer, 2016
Flexible silicone
14 x 115 x 49 cm
Unique
Olga Balema
Interior
Biomorphic Attachment
, 2016
Steel,
latex, poly foam
80
x 102 x 40 cm
Unique
Iza Tarasewicz
Arena II, 2016
Hemp fibre, silicone
700 x 4 ø cm / dimensions variable