Galerie Rodolphe Janssen is delighted to announce the opening of its second gallery space with an exhibition featuring Jürgen Drescher and Sam Moyer.
For this exhibition, the work of Jürgen Drescher and Sam Moyer will be presented together, in counter point, and is the second exhibition for both artists in the gallery, each having been the subject of a previous solo show. The aim of this fortuitous pairing is to highlight the concept of substitution found in the work of both artists.
Drescher and Moyer have a commonality in their work being surrogates for what we understand as traditional sculpture and painting. Jürgen Drescher takes common found objects and casts them in aluminum and other materials to create sculptures whose formal process is within the traditional framework of high art. In the exhibition we encounter a carpet, a stool, cardboard boxes and even a sheet of bubble wrap that have been elevated by Drescher into three-dimensional works of art.
Like the readymades of Duchamp, these basic household items stand in as surrogates for what art history has defined as fine art. However unlike Duchamp, Drescher does not just present the object as a work of art itself, he recreates its form in metal. Therefore, he manipulates the objects to create tension between high and low art. The form of the objects, their implied functions, and the vernacular associations we have with them produce a type of rupture between the walls of gallery and the intimate interior spaces where we normal interact with these objects.
Juxtaposed against Drescher’s sculptures is Sam Moyer’s new body of work entitled Breakers II. At first, Moyer’s wall pieces appear to be carefully composed abstract paintings. However, the artist begins with a process that is very three-dimensional. She soaks canvases into dyes and then lays them out to dry outside in the elements. She then layers the canvas with painted glass to create a composition of depth, richness and dimension that is held together only by its frame. Just as Drescher’s objects are substitutes for fine art sculptures, Moyer’s intricate work of manipulation and construction replaces traditional painting. Whereas the normal role of a frame in painting is to complete the work, to give it a finished look, in Moyer’s pieces, the frame is a harnessing device whose purpose is to contain her multidimensional ideas and visions. Not unlike painting, her work’s subtle references to landscape and photography pull the viewer in.
The installation itself will also play with the concept of substitution and artifice in the gallery’s new space. Drescher and Moyer’s work will be presented in a very classical manner, with framed works hanging on the wall and sculptures carefully installed throughout the space. By exploiting recognized methods of display, the exhibition further challenges our expectations and notions of art and the world around us as we slowly discover that things are not always what they appear to be.
