I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
FIENE SCHARP
 
22 June 2013 - 26 July 2013
Opening: 21 June 2013, 6 pm
Venue: 401contemporary, Potsdamer Straße 81 B, Berlin (Tiergarten)
 
401contemporary is delighted to announce the first collaboration with young Berlin artist Fiene Scharp (1984) and present her solo exhibition I I I I I I I I I I I I I I in the gallery space on Potsdamer Strasse.
 
Fiene Scharp’s work is characterised by great clarity. The artist’s repetitive structures allow the elemental media of her works – paper, graphite, ink – to unfold their full organic materiality.
Scharp traces fine graphite lines so closely together on wood with the graphite creating a relief-like surface that it makes the work oscillate between drawing and object. For it is only through the close sequence that the surprisingly lively materiality of graphite becomes visible. Its subdivision into rectangles results in a shimmering grid of delicate horizontal and vertical linear fields of various densities, which looks like it has been engraved.
 
Scharp tackles graph paper with a fine scalpel, cutting out small, precise boxes. This makes the paper resemble woven fabric, the play of light and shadow revealing the full extent of its fragility.
Yet her pieces do not merely resemble woven material – Fiene Scharp actually weaves individual hairs together into a gossamer fabric, or attaches hairs at the nodes of a delicate grid, so that, like tactile sensors, they extend the drawing out into space.
 
The organic idiosyncrasy of the material as well as the intricate, time-consuming creation process are both at variance with the prescribed strictness and systematisation of a grid; moreover, they bypass the boundaries between two- and three-dimensionality, between strictness of form and organicity, and between craftsmanship and serial production. It is this that gives Scharp’s Œuvre its special quality: using drawing techniques, she achieves the finest reliefs and sculptural plasticity.
Her art has a great deal in common with historical precursors of both Concrete Art and Minimalism. The theme of the grid in particular links Fiene Scharp to many classic positions – Agnes Martin’s clear drawings, for example, come to mind. Yet, at the same time, the artist also manages to call forth another side to this tradition. The obvious materiality of her drawings makes them a commentary and continuation in their own right.
 
Fiene Scharp (1984, Berlin) is fascinated by the constant repetition of the simplest geometric elements. By using and processing material such as paper, graphite, hair and ink her works develop an organic presence and vacillate between drawing and object. Scharp holds an MA in Fine Arts from the UdK Berlin were she did her “Meisterschüler” with Gregor Schneider in 2011. In 2012 she was honoured with the “Meisterschüler” award by the president of the UdK Berlin. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Europe and participated in the highly acclaimed exhibition “Rasterfahndung – Das Raster in der Kunst nach 1945” at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (Germany) in 2012. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I is Scharp’s first solo exhibition with 401contemporary, Berlin.

“Double Bound Economies” is about reading an East German photo archive. This non-institutional archive was created between 1967 and 1990 by the freelance photographer Reinhard Mende, who was commissioned by various GDR combines and the trade fair in Leipzig. “Double Bound Economies” takes the proclamation of internationalism of the socialist production as starting point to thematize its economies, schizophrenia, gestures, contradictions, as well as its staged images, spaces and displays.
The exhibition shows artistic interventions into the archive and contributions by Tekle Belete, KP Brehmer, Seiichi Furuya, Allan Sekula, Noël Burch, Olaf Nicolai and The Otolith Group. “Double Bound Economies” is curated by Estelle Blaschke, Armin Linke and Doreen Mende.