Exhibition Category: Past

Andrew Gritscher is an Austrian/Australian artist acutely attuned to Contemporary culture, his ideas and musings on people and the world we live in are complex, informed and intriguing. Due to his innovative and inventive approach to his artistic practice it is not always possible to immediately comprehend what is being said or presented, there is a coded language in his work that is explicable only after a certain amount of the pieces of the puzzle are located. Gritscher’s intrinsically narrative works reward the patient mind and eye yet they are also so bold and overflowing with visual information that they arrest the viewer and invoke a sense of visual excitement on coming in contact with his multi-layered constructions.

After months of dedicated time in his atelier in Melbourne throughout 2017 Gristcher created an exceptional body of new work for an exhibition that was held at Tête gallery in Berlin last October. For this The Way Out of The Way Out series a total of six works were made using the artist’s main medium at that time, fabric – fabric stitched, unstitched, cut, patched, rearranged, added to, subtracted from – completely transformed into essentially three dimensional works that drape from the wall. At times works in this series are literally buttoned together to make a larger whole work comprised of parts, while his selection of materials appears limitless his work is cohesive and every visual clue intentional even if at times the edges are frayed, the materials look indiscriminately marked, placed or are hanging by a thread.

In Gritscher’s latest exhibition We Give and Expect in Return to be held in Melbourne from late May to mid-June, a combination of three of the key fabric works shown in Berlin as well as a new Porcelain Tile piece made in the first half of this year will be exhibited in combination. This presentation offers audiences based in Australia the chance to see the extraordinary works exhibited in Europe last year as well as see how Gritscher continues to experiment with the materials he selects to express his ideas through his complex large scale artworks.

Andrew Gritscher first exhibited with Jacob Hoerner Galleries in 2015 in the exhibition Extra-Ordinary Paintings Based on Actual Events, then in 2016 with a second solo exhibition titled Altered Beast, then in Berlin in October 2017 with the exhibition The Way Out of the Way Out. We Give and Expect in Return is now his fourth solo exhibition with Jacob Hoerner Galleries. Jacob Hoerner Galleries will also be exhibiting new work by Gritscher at Sydney Contemporary in September 2018 alongside Andrew Sibley and Gillian Warden.

Gritscher is in the Australian Government’s Artbank Collection, the collection of the State Library of Victoria and in numerous private collections in Australia and Europe.

In his upcoming exhibition Duets, Mike Portley explores the nature of contention and opposition in a series of diptychs. The dark subject matter is augmented by a sense of levity and humour where the political climate of conflict and contention is questioned against spacious encompassing backdrops. Portley has chosen a neutral colour palette and selected subjects that signify the adage of “black and white”; of no middle ground between opposing forces. This is a statement that asks questions of the control of contemporary media and finance where people are manipulated into oppositional groups; and for what purpose.

The Andrew Sibley works to be presented in ‘Black & White’ are a series of paintings on Perspex that were created in the mid 1970s, a series of works on paper from the late 1970s / early 1980s, as well as a set of two additional works also on paper from the late 1990s. The Perspex works in particular are indicative of Sibley’s avant-garde approach to art making during this period and are significant specifically to Berlin in that they were created at a time just after the artist undertook a residency in West Berlin in 1972. Sibley’s connection to Germany continued throughout his life with his first exhibition taking place here in 1970, then through his showing again in a solo exhibition in 1972, then in two more shows in the mid-1970s and later in the mid-1980’s where he showed on numerous occasions in Cologne. This upcoming presentation ‘Black & White’ provides the first opportunity to see this important artist’s work in Europe since the late 1980s.

Most significantly and most directly influenced by artists such as Beckman, Klee, Munch, Bacon and the like, Sibley’s affinity with German and European Art was based on more than just his exhibiting here. The impact of his connection to Europe, and understanding of the ideas that were explored by the major artists of the 20th century he followed and those that he was a contemporary of, remained a key part of on his work throughout his life and long illustrious career.

Andrew Sibley’s exhibition ‘Black & White’ is his seventh solo presentation with Jacob Hoerner Galleries. Sibley is represented in all major institutional collections in Australia and Private Collections throughout the world, was senior lecturer at two of Australia’s most prestigious art schools and had three monographs written on him during his lifetime.

After months of dedicated time in his atelier in Melbourne, Australia, Gristcher has created an exceptional body of new work for exhibition at Tête in Berlin. For this ‘The Way Out of The Way Out’ series the artist’s main medium is fabric – fabric that is stitched, unstitched, cut, patched, rearranged, added to, subtracted from – completely transformed into essentially three dimensional works that drape from the wall like a ‘Contemporary Tapestry’ or ‘Soft Graffiti’. At times works in this series are literally buttoned together to make a larger whole work comprised of parts. While his selection of materials appears limitless his work is cohesive and every visual clue intentional even if at times the edges are frayed, the materials look indiscriminately marked, placed or are hanging by a thread.

Hidden in the stitches of his sets of soft panels the content of what Gritscher aims to express is equally impressive, avoiding prescriptive, didactic, language to posit ideas and more benignly provoke or initiate responses.

Andrew Gritscher’s ‘The Way Out of the Way Out’ is his third solo exhibition with Jacob Hoerner Galleries and first exhibition in Berlin. Gritscher is in the Australian Government’s Artbank Collection and in numerous private collections in Australia and Europe.