1 SEPTEMBER – 2 OCTOBER 2010
ANCIENT & MODERN presents sculpture, collage reliefs and video by Vienna-based artist Rudolf Polanszky in his first solo exhibition in Britain.
In the late 1970s, Polanszky made a series of artworks using pigs' fat, entitled 'Schweinsfettzeichnungen' (1976) in an attempt to incorporate something that once was alive into his art. During the 1980s, he developed an extensive and ongoing sculpture practice alongside film and video works, the latter often recording pseudo-scientific experiments or action painting.
Polanszky's sculptures contain the raw scraps of industrial materiality - iron, wood, plastic - bound in visually delicate but robustly balanced 'plinths', which carry aloft plexiglass sections in part describing a circle, or horizontal sections the length of a rectangle and reminiscent of strata below the surface of the earth. The sculptures, like vessels, are sometimes filled with smaller versions of themselves, or else more fluid and visceral substances such as feathers, pigment, foam and fibreglass, ranging in form from the maquette to the monumental. Polanszky emerges from a generation of post 1960s artists that includes Dieter Roth, Valie Export and Franz West and, like these artists, his work has great resonance with what other artists a generation younger are doing today.
The exhibition will be marked by the first in a series of publications to be produced by Ancient & Modern, titled 'Pamphlet'.
Biography
Rudolf Polanszky (born 1952) is an artist based in Vienna. He was recently included in 'Living and Working in Vienna', Kunsthalle Vienna (2010) and 'Hamsterwheel' instigated by Franz West at Venice Biennial (2007), and which subsequently showed in Festival de Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (2007); Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona and Malmo, Sweden (2008). He was included in 'Daisy Chain', MOT International, London (2006) with Richard Forster, Rachel Harrison and Franz West, curated by Bruce Haines. Rudolf Polanszky's films, transferred to video, have been screened at institutions in Europe and North America. In November this year, Ancient & Modern will present his sculpture at Artissima, Turin.
Exhibition Preview: Wednesday 1st September, 6-8pm
Open Wednesdays - Saturdays, 12-6pm and by appointment
For more information & images please contact mail@ancientandmodern.org