We are pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Berlin-based artist Linus Rauch at our gallery.
The work of the conceptual painter takes various forms, including canvases, which are known for their subtle sensuality, physical presence and the resonant relationship they create with surrounding space; and interventions, emerging in reaction to – and as a manipulation of – the architectural context in which they exist.
Parallel to his artistic formation, Rauch pursued studies in the natural sciences. This background still informs his inquiry into our entanglement with reality and the interactions of our embodied consciousness with the physical world. He continuously engages with questions about the tension between knowledge and experience.
With ‘On On and On’ Rauch further deepens the idea of painting he has been developing over the past decade. It is an exhibition that could be described as a reflection on reflections – on painting, and on painting as a means to address and reflect on the self.
In a very literal sense, this notion of reflection is present in the work titled Narcissus: a rectangular shallow pool, covering a large portion of the gallery floor. Its form references one of the base elements of painting, a canvas, stretched on a wooden frame, that seems to have collided with the architecture of the exhibition space.
Hovering on the wall above the mirror-like surface of the dark liquid, the triptych with the title Echo, consisting of three panels, can be found. To varying degrees, each of the panels is made up of pieces of pristine canvas vertically sewn with fragments of found material which were intensely worked on by the artist with multiple layers of paper and transparent fabrics.
The opposite wall of the gallery has been completely transformed by and absorbed into the work titled Recursion / Sameness and Difference. For this work, Rauch applied a single line of ink on an intricately folded fourty meter long piece of canvas. Penetrating the many layers of the folded fabric, the ink imprinted each layer on the next, resulting in a recursive pattern of similar but gradually changing forms on the then unfolded material, which was subsequently sewn and stretched on the wall.
Also part of the exhibition is a series of smaller works, which through their materials and titles invite to a more metaphorical reading of the idea of reflection.
For example, the work "i prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems“, takes its title from a line of the poem Possibilities by the wonderful polish poet Wisława Szymborska, in which she states her individuality by reflecting on her preferences.
A page torn from an old art history book appears in a work with the title Reflections: it depicts a self-portrait of the painter Filippino Lippi, a detail from a fresco in the Brancacci chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. In a similar fashion, a small pencil drawing, after a self-portrait by Raphael, which Rauch made many years ago – and which he found again in a box recently – was used as material in the work titled Projections.
