September heralds the approaching end of summer. Those who went on holiday are now returning to work or school. Those who stayed have to get used to the higher velocity of daily life. In this first month of the new season, we cling to memories of lazy, hot afternoons, recall memorable experiences and summer loves, while already preparing for new challenges and embracing the upcoming change.
In the group exhibition “September,” GNYP Gallery presents works by six gallery artists that loosely address the subject of transformation, each in their own way. Kaifan Wang’s work Dead Rooster III from his series Bedtime Stories recalls the artist’s early childhood in China, when his grandmother would tell him stories during their afternoon naps. In these highly atmospheric paintings, memories become fantasies, myths become hallucinations—the work captures the state of becoming.
In the lesser-known photographs made by Wojciech Fangor in the 1980s and 1990s, the artist displays his fascination with a medium that, according to him, would completely change our social relationships. Visionary as Fangor proved to be in many fields, he investigated the weird appeal of the medium that invaded the private sphere. By deforming the image of the photographed TV screen, degrading its resolution, and cutting the forms, he tried to protect the viewer from the dangers emanating from the conceptual proximity of ubiquitous television. The viewer in Fangor’s work is represented in the exhibition by sculptures of human figures that the artist made at the end of his life, simulating the public as an indispensable part of the artwork and forming its meaning.
As often in real life, opposite Fangor’s TV photographs hangs the dreamy bedscape Temporary Bliss by Christopher Hartmann. This large, meticulously hand-painted landscape made out of bed sheets is rich in vibrant hues reminiscent of the brilliance of Old Masters’ material expression. The work evokes feelings of home and pleasure, but also a longing for what once was but no longer is.
Aiste Stancikaite presents three works from her series Echoes, previously shown in her solo exhibition at Kunstverein Dresden earlier this year. In the series, the protagonist, the nymph Echo, multiplying herself, is shown focusing on the sense of touch, which in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the moment that most often leads to transformation.
In the new works on paper by Elsa Rouy, the body and the face are never stable but always subject to change. The body is cropped, contorted, and twisted; facial expressions vary from serene to enraged. The human condition means being exposed to permanent change.
The largest work in the exhibition is the portrait of a machine made by Harrison Pearce (Phase Transition). The deliberately slightly illogical composition of the otherwise perfectly rendered industrial object stresses the closeness between the machine and the human—a subject that has become extremely topical due to the hopes and fears related to AI.
