This spring the Langen Foundation is presenting the most extensive exhibition by Pae White (b. 1963, lives in Los Angeles) to ever be shown in Europe. The exhibition focus lies on the artist’s large-format tapestries and mobiles – including a new “mirror mobile” specially made for this show – as well as on couch sculptures. Also included are the exhibition poster and advertisements, which Pae White designed herself.
Pae White harnesses the synergies between visual arts, applied arts, design, and architecture. Her oeuvre is distinguished by its hybrid character: surface and space, graphic and object, everyday item and artwork all enter into states of surprising symbiosis in her works. Accordingly, the artwork created by this American artist is polymorphic, ranging from posters and exhibition catalogues to sculptures and space-encompassing installations.
In absence of any thought of hierarchy, Pae White drafts adverts, designs exhibition catalogues, crafts large mobiles made of painted and glued swathes of paper, makes furniture sculptures, or has giant tapestries woven. The unique aesthetic allure of her playfully light work arises through subtle shifts in medium, material, and motif. Her wall tapestries, for instance, display crinkled aluminium foil or billows of smoke, while her couches resemble rumpled sheets of newspaper.
Although the hybrid character of Pae White’s work is readily apparent, she emphasizes that she is not concerned with the blurring of boundaries but instead – in a positive sense – with the hidden possibilities inherent to things: “I like the idea that everything in the world has the potential to be reintroduced as an artwork – even if only as a motif.”
Vital to the artist is the relation her works have to the surrounding space – for instance when she stages her mobiles as flickering clusters. Pae White tailored her presentation to the high Langen Foundation exhibition rooms, enabling the tapestries to be installed as space-consuming objects rather than lying flush with the wall.
Pae White was born in 1963 in Pasadena, California. She graduated from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine, in 1990, and from MFA Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 1991, where she studied under Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley, and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.
Solo exhibitions (selection):
Pae White, South London Gallery, London (2013); Vienna 1900/Ollegro, Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna (2013); Material Mutters, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2011); The Power Plant, Toronto (2010); Smoke, 1301PE Los Angeles (2010); Too Much Night, neugerriemschneider, Berlin (2008); Mr Baci e abbraci, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2008); Another cherry blossom, greengrassi, London (2005); Pae White, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2004).
Group exhibitions (selection):
International Orange: Artists Respond to the Golden Gate Bridge at 75, San Francisco (2012); Print Out, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), Paradise Lost, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2011); Thessaloniki Biennale (2011); Contemplating the Void, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Whitney Biennale, New York (2010); Biennale Venedig (2009); Armory 21th Exhibition, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2009); Notation, Calculation and Form in the Arts, ZKM/Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (2009); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007); Hyper Design, Shanghai Biennale (2006); Glas, Material, Matters, LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2006).
v. Chr. / B.C.
May 5 - Aug 18, 2013
The Viktor and Marianne Langen Collection includes pre-Columbian, Persian, and Japanese works from the period before Christ.
The Viktor and Marianne Langen Collection includes pre-Columbian, Persian, and Japanese works from the period before Christ. These thirty examples of early art from a variety of cultures are presented for the very first time together in the exhibition v. Chr. / B.C.
Manfred Kuttner Werkschau
Jul 19 - Oct 6, 2013 Reception: Fri Jul 19 6pm - 10pm
Manfred Kuttner (1937–2007) entered the stage of the art world together with his artist friends Richter, Lueg Polke.
Manfred Kuttner (1937–2007) entered the stage of the art world together with his artist friends Gerhard Richter, Konrad Lueg, and Sigmar Polke. In 1963, the four artists co-organised an exhibition in Düsseldorf with an aim to demonstrate their radical rejection of all established art movements and to simultaneously position themselves in the art scene. Manfred Kuttner, who in 1961 moved from Dresden to attend the Düsseldorf Art Academy, contributed abstract grid pictures and painted objects. In both cases he used newly developed fluorescent Plaka colours in neon hues, which had otherwise found application in advertising graphics. His pictures thus associated the aesthetics of Pop Art with non-objective painting. Sadly, Manfred Kuttner ended his career as an artist before it could really begin: in 1967 he withdrew from the art world due to economic considerations. Now, after over 45 years, Villa Merkel has joined the Langen Foundation in realising a show that offers a first overview, from an institutional perspective, of an oeuvre that ended prematurely. His paintings and drawings will be complemented by objects, photographs, and a film. On the occasion of the exhibition, the first monograph on Manfred Kuttner will be published.
Jorinde Voigt Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata, 1-32
Aug 31, 2013 - Feb 2, 2014 Reception: Sat Aug 31 6pm - 10pm
The delicately styled drawings of Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977) are reminiscent of diagrams, musical scores, or notations.
The delicately styled drawings of Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977, lives and works in Berlin) are reminiscent of diagrams, musical scores, or notations. Her works, usually in large format and produced in series, are created in close association with everyday reality: perceptions of a visual, acoustic, tactile, or olfactory nature are translated into lines, numerals, and letters. In addition, the artist has developed a kind of semiotic code that appears distinctively subjective and individual yet is actually subject to strict rules and systems. In her thirty-two-part cycle of 2012, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonatas 1–32, Jorinde Voigt sets out to thematise Beethoven’s music without illustrating or interpreting it. Here, the greatest challenge for the artist lay in “developing a notation that extracts the emotional spectrum inscribed in Beethoven’s musical score”. In parallel to the exhibition at the Langen Foundation a monograph on this work complex will be published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.