New York, USA
04 / 03 / 17 – 07 / 03 / 17
Color of Time - Seq'16 (2016) – left, Two Nervous Speakers (2017) – speakers on floor, Salt & Sand (2016) – middle, Kula: Turning Back (2017) – right. Photo: Mariel Lindhansen.
FRIEZE, NEW YORK 2017
NADIA KAABI-LINKE
May 5 - 7 2017
Opening Preview: May 4, 2017
Booth: B24
NADIA KAABI-LINKE
May 5 - 7 2017
Opening Preview: May 4, 2017
Booth: B24
Experimenter presents The After-image of Residue, a solo by Nadia Kaabi-Linke at Frieze NY 2017. Kaabi-Linke uses painting, sculpture, installation and printmaking, as recorders of time. Her practice relies on continued use of indexical, time-related retrieving, excavating and mark-making processes that explore materials and surfaces like a palaeontologist or an anthropologist, using time as a medium to reveal after-images of residual information.
Time finds itself subtly expressed in the central work in the stand, Colours of Time. Scraping and preserving paint chips from old wall-surfaces of buildings of historical importance, having stood for centuries across cities like Berlin, Tunis, Kiev, Jerusalem, Ahmedabad and Kolkata, a series of 11 seemingly monochromatic paintings line the walls. Using paint chips collected from these wall-surfaces that have been repeatedly painted over, Kaabi-Linke realizes a visible colour of time. Salt & Sand, hangs from the ceiling – an old weighing scale holding equal measure of both materials, one of which transforms over time affecting its delicate balance. On the wall opposite is Kula: Turning Back, a work that straddles ideas of a happening in time and the act of making. The work is essentially ‘made’ by allowing lignite dust blown in the air to settle on the canvas and captures momentarily, a fraction of time. Lignite, a material that has prehistoric origins, has a potentially strong resonance with ideas of time. It was used by European painters in the 18th century to replace the expensive umbra pigment that was used for dark areas and shadows. In Germany the cheap lignite powder fuelled the dark appearance of Romanticism. A sound piece, The Smallest Group of Nervous Speakers, envelops the stand’s environment with a curious ticking noise, digitally rendered from converting twitches derived from Repetitive Motion Disorder in people waiting, or involuntary movements of legs and feet of people, and comment on interludes of waiting in contemporary lives, nervous anticipation and our relationship with these spaces between time.
As with anything that seeks to endure and be witnessed for even a short while in a temporal register, The After-image of Residue, throws light on Kaabi-Linke‘s practice in which she plays the role of an investigator, looking within the crevices of her subjects. Her inquiry through inscription & amnesia, restoration & remainder, is a critique of the conceit of narrative completeness.
Time finds itself subtly expressed in the central work in the stand, Colours of Time. Scraping and preserving paint chips from old wall-surfaces of buildings of historical importance, having stood for centuries across cities like Berlin, Tunis, Kiev, Jerusalem, Ahmedabad and Kolkata, a series of 11 seemingly monochromatic paintings line the walls. Using paint chips collected from these wall-surfaces that have been repeatedly painted over, Kaabi-Linke realizes a visible colour of time. Salt & Sand, hangs from the ceiling – an old weighing scale holding equal measure of both materials, one of which transforms over time affecting its delicate balance. On the wall opposite is Kula: Turning Back, a work that straddles ideas of a happening in time and the act of making. The work is essentially ‘made’ by allowing lignite dust blown in the air to settle on the canvas and captures momentarily, a fraction of time. Lignite, a material that has prehistoric origins, has a potentially strong resonance with ideas of time. It was used by European painters in the 18th century to replace the expensive umbra pigment that was used for dark areas and shadows. In Germany the cheap lignite powder fuelled the dark appearance of Romanticism. A sound piece, The Smallest Group of Nervous Speakers, envelops the stand’s environment with a curious ticking noise, digitally rendered from converting twitches derived from Repetitive Motion Disorder in people waiting, or involuntary movements of legs and feet of people, and comment on interludes of waiting in contemporary lives, nervous anticipation and our relationship with these spaces between time.
As with anything that seeks to endure and be witnessed for even a short while in a temporal register, The After-image of Residue, throws light on Kaabi-Linke‘s practice in which she plays the role of an investigator, looking within the crevices of her subjects. Her inquiry through inscription & amnesia, restoration & remainder, is a critique of the conceit of narrative completeness.