CONSTELLATIONS and TRAJECTORIES

 

Franziska Furter & Timo Nasseri


CCA Andratx is excited to present the first duo-show by the artists Franziska Furter (CH, 1972) and Timo Nasseri (DE, 1972). Constellations and Trajectories has been created specifically in and for the CCA and features new series of works, as well as a thrilling and unprecedented collaboration between the artists that has been developed during their residency in the Studios.

 

A first glance of the exhibition’s title may suggest the viewer to read the works from a scientific perspective: stars, constellations, galaxies, cosmic superstructures etc. Despite the fact that both artists share, from different positions, a deep-rooted interest in astronomy and quantum physics, this is not manifested as a static message, but is rather used as a language. The exhibition fosters the coexistence between the parts that symbiotically merge into a whole, united by either natural becoming, chance or physics, and where every piece should relatively be read as real, fiction and possible, all at once.

 

Timo Nasseri’s large wall painting of a disruptive figurehead welcomes the visitor into the exhibition. The artist has transferred into the gallery space the camouflage painting used on ships in World War I, Razzle Dazzle, consisting of complex patterns of geometric figures in contrasting colours, making the enemy unable to pinpoint the position of the ships. To do so, Nasseri has deconstructed these patterns to its smallest geometrical units, and thereby unveiling their influence from indigenous cultures from Latin America, Africa and Asia. For the artist, these motifs reveal a universal graphic alphabet which he has rendered into sculptures in the extensive series “The Order of Everything” (2018)”.

 

Intrinsic to Nasseri's work, is the research, selection and collection of languages and codes shared by one or several cultures. Yet most striking is the twist of meaning of those apparently closed codes that the artist wide-opens, enabling new readings and interpretations, as seen in the “Unknown Letters” series from 2015-2017.



 

 Franziska Furter (CH)

 

 

Furter was born in Zurich, Swiss, in 1972. She lives and works in Basel and Berlin and will be staying in Studio Rojo during September 2019.

 

Franziska Furter completed her training at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich (1992-94) and at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst HKG in Basel (1994-97). Her works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions (Kunstverein Arnsberg, Palais de Tokyo – Module in Paris, Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, Kunsthaus Baselland).

 

Timo Nasseri (DE)

 

 

Within the Artist-in-Residence Program, CCA is delighted to host Timo Nasseri. Nasseri was born in Berlin in 1972 to a German mother and an Iranian father. He is currently working and living in Berlin and will be staying in Studio Rojo during October 2019.

 

Nasseri began his artistic career in photography graduating from the Berliner Lette-Verein in 1997 and in 2004 he made the transition to creating sculpture. Combining Islamic and western cultural heritages, his work is inspired as much by specific memories and religious references as by universal archetypes described by mathematics and language, and the inner truths of form and rhythm.


As if we were inside the "Library of Babel" imagined by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941, the idea of an infinite library containing all the books that have been written, are being written and could ever be written, multiplies for Nasseri the possibilities of language and meaning-making exponentially. Infinity necessarily entails possibility in Nasseri’s work. Precisely, in the series "I Saw All the Letters in All The Stars" (2017), he has imagined and depicted constellations that man has not yet discovered, but which by probability are certain to exist somewhere in the vastness of the infinite universe.

 

Infinity is likewise crucial in Franziska Furter’s work. Whereas Timo’s interpretation of infinity was subjected to possibility, Franziska’s perspective involves both, chance and synergism. Her starting point is the drawing of the line, the base-element on which graphic communication has been built. Her work develops an evolution in the experimentation with lines in a range of media and dimensions –through the installation medium, drawing transcends the two-dimensional support to expand into the space it inhabits-.

 

Strings and ropes become the physical form of the line, drawing through space the trajectories that guide the beholder through the sets of works. However, they not only mark the lines, but also highlight the void in between them. Inspired by Eastern aesthetics and phenomenology, for Furter presence and void have the same degree of significance; since this antagonistic dualism offers freedom of drawing with infinite possibilities. The ancestral energy-loaded knotted strings, created meditatively and meticulously in her studio, are transferred to the exhibition space generating a spatial network of lines and synergies. Apparently arbitrary, the knots emphasize the physicality and vacuity of the inhabited space, while enhancing the line-string that links them together -interval-.

 

Freedom is also a key element in Furter’s work, as can be found in the series of marbled drawings "Scattered Rainbow" (2014-ongoing). For creating these works, the artist combines different fluid materials -water, ink and soap- and draws a line with a gesture before impressing on the paper; it is ultimately chance that resolves the final appearance of the work. The silhouettes outlined in these colourful drawings sharply contrast against the pristine surface of the white paper, and as with the installations, highlight the large unoccupied space on the paper.

 

Finally, the exhibition also marks the first collaboration between the artists. Taking advantage of the facilities provided by working together in the CCA Studios, they have been able to catalyse their individual practices and approaches in an exciting new series, generating stirring new aspects in their work.

The collaboration comprises more than 12 unique works, which take their starting point in the universal graphic alphabet created by Nasseri. Unlike the minimalistic metal edition, these new sculptures gain three-dimensionality by being sculpted in ceramics. This setting enables Furter to engage individual dialogues with both, the object and its surrounding space, through her knotted-strings contribution.

The quid pro quo scenario results in an interesting series of symbol-loaded works, enhanced by both, the selected motif in the ceramic work and the selection of the complementary knot. Eventually these objects hold more energy and power than it could appear and become real totems or talismans.

The chosen material is likewise an interesting feature. Using glazed ceramics -a traditional technique in Mallorca and for which they have worked together with a local artisan- has provided the possibility of working with the nuances within the visible, the invisible and random layers carrying even more energy into the works.

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