Tag Archives: Simon Callery

Simon Callery and Georg Schmidt

RAUMX London 12.05 – 27.05.2023 Preview Thursday 11.05.2023

Simon Callery, Stura; 2021

Simon Callery

I am a painter. In order to understand what painting can do today I have made works that exist on the margins of what can be understood as painting. I have written the word ‘INVERT’ on my studio wall to remind me every day that I must subvert the established conventions of image-based painting if I want to find new roles and develop new forms of painting. It is my intention that an encounter with one of my paintings is as much for the body as it is for the eye.

I have worked in the landscape alongside field archaeologists on many projects. What I have learnt there I have applied to works made in the urban environment and developed in studio based work. The visceral qualities of the excavation sites have made me sensitive to the physical qualities of landscape and the relationship of material to time.

The paintings share spatial qualities we associate with sculpture and I embrace it. We live in image dominant cultures and it is possible to say that the stress on the visual in everyday life inevitable suppresses the other senses. I am working to give painting a material body and as a consequence, a better awareness of our own.

Simon Callery, Country Register, 2018
  • born London
  • Graduated from Cardiff College of Art 1983
  • Has shown extensively in the UK and internationally since 1990s.
  • Public collections include: Arts Council Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. Birmingham Museums Trust. British Museum. European Investement Bank, Luxembourg. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate
  • Forthcoming shows 2023: Inauguration Lo Brutto Stadl, Paris. Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting now. Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Simon Callery & Vlatka Horvat, Annex14, Zuerich. Space as Duty of Care, Studio G7,Bologna. Ouverture, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Simon Callery & Georg Schmidt, RAUMX-London. Simon Callery.Contact paintings, CAB, Burgos. The Surface of Place and the Depth of Place . Rudolfinum, Prague.
Simon Callery, Second Red Mantle, 2021

Georg Schmidt

Georg Schmidt, Higgs, 2018

The exchange with researchers from the field of quantum physics has had an influence on my painterly reflections for some time. At the beginning of this discussion was the question of what the Higgs field is all about. The description of an energetic field struck me, not directly perceptible to us, but with significant effects on our world. It seemed to me as if I had encountered here the paraphrase of an underpainting, as it has been used in painting for centuries. Color as underpainting can be like a Higgs field in the picture as a force field effective. While painting, I am preoccupied with this principle of layering, spatially dynamic processes of colourful relationships that are not commensurable or measurably defined in a state. Further concepts, such as chaos and order, determination and coincidence as well as interactions, spatial movements, dimension and proportions I reflected with the pictorial means of painting. Like a tapestry of sound, this encounter with the theme of quantum physics accompanied me in the studio.

Georg Schmidt, Studio Duo, 2022
Georg Schmidt, EA9, 2021 (Watercolour)
  • Born               Lübeck, Germany
  • 1985-1989    Philosophie, Universität Hamburg
  • ab 1986         Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg
  • ab 1994         Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
  • 1995               graduated as master student with Gotthard Graubner,
                            lives and works in Cologne and at the
                            Raketenstation, Stiftung Insel Hombroich
  • Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
  • 2022               „Und dein Grün“,Kunstraum K634, Köln
  • 2019               Geschichte, Kopfermann Fuhrmann Stiftung, Düsseldorf
  • 2018               Lesende, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2017               Tide, Kunstverein in der Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (K)
  • 2016               Horizont, Galerie Weigmann, Düsseldorf
  • 2015              Flutmarke, Galerie Reul, Bonn
  • 2021/22         Mentor in the Art Mentorship NRW
  • seit 2017       Annual teaching assignments on the subject of color, FB Architektur, Alanushochschule
  • Privat and public Collections i.a.:Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Kunsthalle Lübeck. Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Off the Wall – installation views

View into the studio space with left S. Callery -K. Finklea-S.Dannenberg (right)

H.Ardila ( left) -Kevin Finklea (right)

RAUMX-Letftpartly seen Deb Covell-Simon Callery (middle)-Katrin Bremermann

Katrin Bremermann, 2017(left- Sebastian Dannenberg, Ellis Portable ,2017 (right)

Sebastian Dannenberg, Ellis Portable, 2017

S.Dannenberg, Volume Up, 2017

Hernan Ardila, Untitled, 2016 (left) -Deb Covell, Tightfit, 2016

Deb Covell, Tightfit.2016 ( (wall), partly seen Deb Covell Shroud, 2017

Deb Covell, Shroud, 2017- Simon Callery, Three Piece Leaning Wallpit Painting, 2014

Off the Wall – painting and object – 07.07 until 22.7.2017 , Preview Thursday 6.07.2017 from 6pm

Off the Wall came about as a response to problems or questions I have about my own work. Issues around the edge, the relationship between the surface, form, the support and the question, when does a painting become an object?

Although I have not completely let go of the image or frame in my own work, there has been a move towards physicality and this was something I wanted to explore.

Simon Callery
Orange-WallPit Painting, 2016

Marcia Tucker wrote about Richard Tuttle for his exhibition at the Whitney in 1975… .So much of Tuttle’s work is a result of body activity that is partly caused by the fact that physical activity is the most direct and common means we have of translating interior states into external expression; in a very direct way, frowning, smiling, closed or open body positions, etc., are our primary means of communication, because they are experientially rather than analytically comprehensible. Our own experience of our bodies is “pre-­‐scientific,” primitive and immediate.

Katrin Bremermann
Twin Talk, 2016,
oil on canvas, 42 x 32 x 7 cm + 42 x 29 x 7 cm

In the late sixties, The ‘Supports and Surfaces’ movement focused on processes in painting essentially involved in the materiality and objecthood of the painting surface itself. They prioritised the importance of site and the reduction of painting to bare essentials, foregrounding the structural support of the stretcher for instance or leaving canvases bare or un-stretched, folded or suspended, tied off or draped. Obvious comparisons can be drawn to some of the work here today.

With shows at Cherry & Martin in Los Angeles followed by another at the Canada gallery in New York, both in 2014, the short lived movement has had somewhat of a resurgence although some might say, for many artists it never went away. Maybe for someone like Richard Tuttle this is true.

Sebastian Dannenberg

With shows such as  ENANTIODROMIA, also featuring Simon Callery, at the Fold gallery in 2014 and REAL PAINTING in 2015 at the Castlefield Gallery which was co-curated by Deb Covell and Jo McGonigal, it is plain to see that the ethos behind the Support/Surface movement is still very much alive.

Hernan Ardila
2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The list of artists showing here today has developed over time and with discussions between Martina and myself I feel it has evolved into a cohesive group that bounce playfully off one another whilst still asserting their own individuality. From the beginning we were keen for the exhibition to represent both UK and international artists and although they are from far afield there is a tangible collective consciousness.

Some you could say are more painterly and others more sculptural, though all consider themselves to be painters and continuing in the tradition of painting. Saying this, there is a will to break out of the conventions and free painting from the reigns of the canvas and frame, Off The Wall and into the space of the gallery.

Deb Covell,
red-submerged-forms

By removing the frame and therefore the image, painting is allowed to be matter and material. This move towards objectness raises the question of, what is the stuff that makes a painting, what is it made of and in turn this leads to decisions about the making and the process of construction. Whether it be the wood of the support, the canvas or the paint itself, each are treated equally and the emphasis is put on the materiality and physical nature of each component.

Jai Llewellyn, 2017

Kevin Finklea