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"Dargow - Two proposals, one place", Silvia Reneses & Ebba Rohweder
December 15th 2011 - January 13th 2012
Lucy R. Lippard
“CROSSINGS - In a sense this exhibition brings us two places, though they both have the same name – Dargow, Germany. Ebba Rohweder sees a familiar place over time, from past to present, the span she has known personally. Spaniard Silvia Reneses sees different place, unfamiliar, newly revealed. Her small paintings are postcard size, indicative of the visitor’s view, while Rohweder’s video and music extend over time, including family and change. The artist’s book becomes a souvenir while the video/music becomes nostalgia, or corrected nostalgia. Dargow was once on the border between two places that were once (and then became again) a single place – Germany as a divided and a unified nation. This quasi-geographical fact augments the dual vision. For both artists, landscape is “baggage". The viewer is invited to be in two places at once, and to bring their own baggage – the inescapable personal associations that inevitably surface as we stand before someone else’s images."
_________________________________________
The project, Dargow - Two proposals, one place, that will be presented at the José Robles Gallery, Madrid, arises from the collaboration of two European women artists, living in Madrid, Ebba Rohweder, German and Silvia Reneses, Spanish and explores from different subjectivities and through mixed media - video, sound, painting, photography and text - a place and its landscape. Dargow is a small village in the North of Germany, located on the banks of the great lake Schaalsee, which, in the recent past was the border between the former GDR, East Germany and the BRD, West Germany.
After a journey to this territory in 2009 both artists independently produced works on Dargow, arising afterwards the possibility to exhibit the projects jointly. Though the starting point of both artists is very different, a connection is dictated by that same place. One can recognise in both works pathway crossings on the gaze that transits on the same territory.
Silvia Reneses’s work, Dargow-Land, documents the place through postcard size acrylic landscape paintings on paper. The works’s subtitles explore an unkown language indicating that any landscape emanates from the different cultures that have been shaping it and is therefore what the territory has been absorbing under its surface. The visual play between the small paintings, the photos from which the paintings have been produced and the investigation on the german language intend to reproduce the visual, sensitive and knowledge connections that any journey entails.
Dargow was for Ebba Rohweder the place of residence in her childhood and youth and her video Dargow with detour is a collage of different layers of time. Due to her studies in music and composition the artist continues in this work with her explorations on merging two disciplines: video and composition. The delicate and sometimes disturbing look at childhood memories and place as well as the exploratory yet emotive present gaze makes of this work a self-portrait through a landscape.
Silvia Reneses born in Madrid, Spain, in 1965, is an artist living and working in Madrid. She graduated in 1999 from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (BA Hons - Critical Fine Art Practice) London. She has taken part among others in the following exhibitions: “Much depends on the viewer“, Vienna curated by Silvio Salgado within the Vienna International Apartment project, “Friction“ at the London Print Studio Gallery, space curated by Paul O’Neill, Escalas at the José Robles Gallery in Madrid and a solo exhibition at Gallery Cruce - Art and Contemporary Theory in Madrid in 2008. www.silviareneses.com
Ebba Rohweder born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1966, is a multimedia and interdisciplinary german artist working as a video artist, composer, performer and improviser musician. She studied classical flute at the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen, Germany. In 1991 she moved to Berlin and worked as contemporary music freelance musician and performance artist, getting in 2001 a Grant as a composer from the Berliner Senat. In 2004 she moved to Madrid and has since explored the interconnections between images and sound in her video compositions, which have been presented amongst others at: LOOP art fair, Barcelona; MediaLab Prado, Madrid; OffLimits, Madrid; CCCB, Barcelona; Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona; Instituto Cervantes, Paris; Festival re:new, Copenhagen; Technische Universität, Berlin; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Gallery Cruce, Madrid. www.ebbarohweder.com
“CROSSINGS - In a sense this exhibition brings us two places, though they both have the same name – Dargow, Germany. Ebba Rohweder sees a familiar place over time, from past to present, the span she has known personally. Spaniard Silvia Reneses sees different place, unfamiliar, newly revealed. Her small paintings are postcard size, indicative of the visitor’s view, while Rohweder’s video and music extend over time, including family and change. The artist’s book becomes a souvenir while the video/music becomes nostalgia, or corrected nostalgia. Dargow was once on the border between two places that were once (and then became again) a single place – Germany as a divided and a unified nation. This quasi-geographical fact augments the dual vision. For both artists, landscape is “baggage". The viewer is invited to be in two places at once, and to bring their own baggage – the inescapable personal associations that inevitably surface as we stand before someone else’s images."
_________________________________________
The project, Dargow - Two proposals, one place, that will be presented at the José Robles Gallery, Madrid, arises from the collaboration of two European women artists, living in Madrid, Ebba Rohweder, German and Silvia Reneses, Spanish and explores from different subjectivities and through mixed media - video, sound, painting, photography and text - a place and its landscape. Dargow is a small village in the North of Germany, located on the banks of the great lake Schaalsee, which, in the recent past was the border between the former GDR, East Germany and the BRD, West Germany.
After a journey to this territory in 2009 both artists independently produced works on Dargow, arising afterwards the possibility to exhibit the projects jointly. Though the starting point of both artists is very different, a connection is dictated by that same place. One can recognise in both works pathway crossings on the gaze that transits on the same territory.
Silvia Reneses’s work, Dargow-Land, documents the place through postcard size acrylic landscape paintings on paper. The works’s subtitles explore an unkown language indicating that any landscape emanates from the different cultures that have been shaping it and is therefore what the territory has been absorbing under its surface. The visual play between the small paintings, the photos from which the paintings have been produced and the investigation on the german language intend to reproduce the visual, sensitive and knowledge connections that any journey entails.
Dargow was for Ebba Rohweder the place of residence in her childhood and youth and her video Dargow with detour is a collage of different layers of time. Due to her studies in music and composition the artist continues in this work with her explorations on merging two disciplines: video and composition. The delicate and sometimes disturbing look at childhood memories and place as well as the exploratory yet emotive present gaze makes of this work a self-portrait through a landscape.
Silvia Reneses born in Madrid, Spain, in 1965, is an artist living and working in Madrid. She graduated in 1999 from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (BA Hons - Critical Fine Art Practice) London. She has taken part among others in the following exhibitions: “Much depends on the viewer“, Vienna curated by Silvio Salgado within the Vienna International Apartment project, “Friction“ at the London Print Studio Gallery, space curated by Paul O’Neill, Escalas at the José Robles Gallery in Madrid and a solo exhibition at Gallery Cruce - Art and Contemporary Theory in Madrid in 2008. www.silviareneses.com
Ebba Rohweder born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1966, is a multimedia and interdisciplinary german artist working as a video artist, composer, performer and improviser musician. She studied classical flute at the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen, Germany. In 1991 she moved to Berlin and worked as contemporary music freelance musician and performance artist, getting in 2001 a Grant as a composer from the Berliner Senat. In 2004 she moved to Madrid and has since explored the interconnections between images and sound in her video compositions, which have been presented amongst others at: LOOP art fair, Barcelona; MediaLab Prado, Madrid; OffLimits, Madrid; CCCB, Barcelona; Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona; Instituto Cervantes, Paris; Festival re:new, Copenhagen; Technische Universität, Berlin; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Gallery Cruce, Madrid. www.ebbarohweder.com
