Kuckei + Kuckei

SHORT STACK

Joe Biel

“Stack 6 (Dave)", 2014, Watercolor, Gouache and Graphite on Paper, 51 x 38 cm

Joe Biels Arbeiten waren und sind ein poetischer Zusammenprall von Schönheit und der manchmal grausamen Absurdität der heutigen Welt. Seine figurativen Zeichnungen stellt er häufig in einen bodenlosen Negativraum. So kommt es, dass seine Figuren losgelöst von einer narrativen Umgebung, isoliert in ihrem eigenen Sein sind. Wiederkehrende Bildthemen seiner Arbeiten sind Menschlichkeit, Ironie, Gegensätzlichkeit, Veränderung und Wandel. Seine Arbeiten haben keine zementierte Deutung. Der Betrachter wird dazu eingeladen sich den Arbeiten emotional zu nähern oder sich zu distanzieren. Eine Deutung überlässt Biel stets seinem Publikum. Die Szenen, obgleich häufig eingefroren in einem Moment, beginnen sich automatisch fortzusetzen. Damit verlangt Biel eine Beteiligung und keine passive Betrachtung seiner Arbeiten.

Mit der Arbeit „Veil“ schafft er gerade sein Panoptikum der Kultur- und Medienlandschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts. Auf über 1000 Fernsehbildschirmen werden Szenen aus klassischen Filmen, Ausschnitte von Kunstwerken, Aufzeichnungen von Konzerten, Szenen aus dem täglichen Strom von TV-Sendungen, Nachrichten, Sex, berüchtigte und weniger berüchtigten Persönlichkeiten bei ihrem täglichen Werk, ergänzt durch immer wieder weißes Rauschen festgehalten. Das Fragment ist dabei das entscheidende Motiv. Biel sieht ihn ihm das künstlerische Erbe unsere Zeit und beschreibt es als seine Art Informationen aufzunehmen. Im Zuge des Auswahlprozesses der Szenen werden so Dinge von persönlicher Relevanz, wie bestimmte Filme oder Musik, zu einem Tropfen im Ozean der Bildschirme.

Joe Biel wird seine Arbeit an „Veil“ voraussichtlich im Herbst 2014 beenden. Die Arbeit wird noch nicht in seiner jetzigen Ausstellung „Short Stack“ zu sehen sein, doch ist das Werk von Bedeutung, da es den Ausgangspunkt für seine Werkgruppe „Stacks“ darstellt.

Er selbst sagt über seine Stacks, sie seinen kleine Collagen. Die Bilder, die über die Schirme der Fernseher flimmern sind zu poetischen Montagen oder Baukästen von Assoziationen komponiert. Auch hier nimmt Biel Abstand von einer rationalen Auswahl und lässt dem intuitiven Auswahlprozess Raum. Freiheraus gibt er zu, die Auswahl manchmal selbst nicht zu verstehen. So zeigt Stack 6 (Dave) zwei isolierte Figuren, eine davon im Wasser schwimmend. Nun lässt sich über den Titel der Arbeit das Rätsel um die Identität eines der Dargestellten lösen, doch ist dies keineswegs der Schlüssel zum Verständnis der Arbeit. Entscheidender als die Geschichte der Dargestellten scheint der Moment der Darstellung und was in diesem transportiert wird. So ist es zum einen eine Mischung aus Erstaunen, Erschrecken und Ehrfurcht und zum anderen möglicherweise so etwas wie Kampfgeist und Erschöpfung. Ebenso wie Stack 6 (Dave) zehren die anderen Arbeiten der Serie von der Kraft ihrer Bilder, jedes ein kleines Rätsel, jedes eine neue Geschichte.

Joe Biel wurde 1966 in Boulder, Colorado geboren. 1990 erhielt er seinen MFA für Malerei an der University of Michigan. Derzeit lehrt er Kunst und Design an der California State University, Fullerton. 2003 und 2008 erhielt der den Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. Seine großformatige Arbeit „Compound“ ist Teil der neuen Hängung “Bruegel Land” des Stedelijk Museum Lier und des KMSK Antwerpen, Belgien. Er lebt und arbeitet seit 2000 in Los Angeles, CA.

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Joe Biel´s work was, and still is, a poetic clash between beauty and the sometimes brutal absurdities of the contemporary world. He frequently places his figurative drawings in a bottomless, negative space. As a result, his figures, torn away from any narrative surroundings, are isolated in their own being. Recurring pictorial themes in his works are humaneness, irony, contradictoriness, change, and transformation. His works know no fixed interpretation. The observer is invited to emotionally approach or distance him/herself from the works. Biel always leaves it to his audience to come up with an interpretation. The scenes, although they are often frozen in a specific moment, begin to move on automatically. Consequently, Biel insists that people participate in, and not passively observe, his works.

With his work Veil, he is in the process of creating his panopticon of the cultural and media landscape of the 21st century. On more than 1,000 television screens, he captures scenes from classical films, excerpts from works of art, recordings of concerts, scenes from the daily flood of TV broadcasts, news, sex, and infamous and less infamous personalities going about their daily affairs, supplemented again and again by a white hiss. Here, the fragment is the decisive motif. Biel sees in it the artistic heritage of our age, and describes it as his way of recording information. During the process of selecting the scenes, items of personal relevance, such as particular films and music, become a drop in the ocean of monitors.

Joe Biel will probably finish his work on Veil in autumn 2014. Although the work will not yet be on show at his present exhibition Short Stack, but it will still be important, because it represents the starting point for his group of works entitled Stack.

He refers to his stacks as his little collages. The pictures flickering across the television screens have been composed as poetic montages and construction kits of associations. Here, too, Biel distances himself from a rational selection – allowing space for an intuitive selection process instead. He frankly admits that he doesn´t always understand the selection himself. For instance, Stack 6 (Dave) shows two isolated figures – one of them floating in water. The title of the work makes it possible to solve the riddle of the identity of one of the objects represented, but this is by no means the key to understanding the work. More decisive than the history of the thing presented is, it would seem, the moment of presentation and what is being transported. Hence, it is, on the one hand, a mixture of astonishment, fear and reverence and, on the other hand, perhaps something like fighting spirit and exhaustion, too. As with Stack 6 (Dave), the other works in this series live off the energy of the pictures, each one a tiny riddle, and each a new story.

Joe Biel was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1966. In 1990, he received his MFA in painting at the University of Michigan. He currently teaches art and design at California State University, Fullerton. In 2003 and 2008, he received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. His large-format work Compound is a part of the new hanging Bruegel Land at the Stedelijk Museum Lier and the KMSK in Antwerp, Belgium. He has been living and working in Los Angeles, CA, since 2000.

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Kuckei + Kuckei remise
presents

Guy Tillim

JO´BURG
2. Mai – 14. Juni 2014
Eröffnung / opening reception / Freitag, 2. Mai, 19 – 21h

Artist´s statement:

White residents fled Johannesburg´s inner city in the 1990s. The removal of the Group Areas Act foreshadowed a flow into the city of black residents and owners of small businesses seeking opportunities and better lives. Former denizens looked back in self-righteous justification at a city that was given over to plunder and mayhem. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, backed up by eyewitness reports and statistics. Everyone had their horror stories.

In amongst this turmoil existed the tower blocks occupied by tenants who were holding onto occupancy and managing the buildings in ways of their own devising. Their story had gone something like this: in the 1990s the owners absconded, leaving managing agents to retrieve what rents they could. In most cases, these agents were corrupt, did not pay the utilities, and disappeared with the money. These were tidy sums, handed over by poor people who conscientiously paid up to avoid having to go back where they came from.

The decay of Jo´burg´s centre can be ascribed to many factors but perhaps none more so than the absence of Body Corporates. These had become relics of a more genteel era; the communal responsibilities that are contentious in even the most well-heeled blocks were not marked out. Windows were broken and not repaired. Lifts froze and their shafts became tips.

The relationship between tenants and owners or their agents deteriorated with disputes over the state of the buildings, and in some cases resulted in unpaid rents and dues. The buildings started looking like fire hazards, and the City Council began closing on them for unpaid utilities. In between the needs of City Council and the aspirations of developers anticipating the bloom of an African city lies the fate of Jo´burg´s residents. The outcome will decide whether or not Johannesburg becomes, again, a city of exclusion.

Opening hours during Gallery Weekend Berlin:
Saturday, May 3, 11am - 7pm / Sunday, May 4, 11am - 7pm

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