| Man&Eve recently opened its new exhibition venue with The Borrowed Loop, a group exhibition featuring work by Iain Andrews, Karin Brunnermeier, Filippo Caramazza, Bouke de Vries, Ori Gersht, Henrietta Simson, Esther Teichmann, and Michael Whittle. The exhibition takes its title from Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2002 book Postproduction, in which the modern-day artist’s use of appropriation is likened to the DJ’s sample or “borrowed loop.” As in music, the art of postproduction breaks with traditions of referencing and citation, moving instead toward a culture of “shareware” in which forms, already within the circulation of the cultural market are re-imagined and re-contextualized by artists. |  |
Lucy Newman Cleeve
Man&Eve recently opened its new exhibition venue with The Borrowed Loop, a group exhibition featuring work by Iain Andrews, Karin Brunnermeier, Filippo Caramazza, Bouke de Vries, Ori Gersht, Henrietta Simson, Esther Teichmann, and Michael Whittle. The exhibition takes its title from Nicholas Bourriaud’s 2002 book Postproduction, in which the modern-day artist’s use of appropriation is likened to the DJ’s sample or “borrowed loop.” As in music, the art of postproduction breaks with traditions of referencing and citation, moving instead toward a culture of “shareware” in which forms, already within the circulation of the cultural market are re-imagined and re-contextualized by artists. Whilst the themes explored by the artists within the exhibition are varied, what links them is a propensity for the referencing and re-editing of images and concepts from further back in the “collective machinery.” The selected works within the exhibition look beyond recent art history, drawing instead from the iconography of periods such as the Renaissance, Dutch Golden Age, and Orientalist art.
I had this show in mind for about a year. I had been doing studio visits with a number of artists we had not worked with before, but whom we were interested in showing. I started to sense a relationship between their works that also seemed to resonate with work by some of the artists that Man&Eve represents. These initial relationships were felt instinctively—I was more concerned with their visual and aesthetic resonances than with any overarching curatorial “idea.” As these resonances became clearer, a critical framework for the exhibition began to emerge. It became clear that, rather than aiming to dismantle traditions or devalue the essence of the “original,” these artists were all borrowing from visual culture to create new forms, re-mixing concepts and imagery from the past, and creating new dialogues with the present. This realization helped to edit the selection of work, and to suggest other artists we might like to invite to take part in the show.
This tends to be how we work at Man&Eve. Curatorial ideas are generated out of a dialogue and relationship with the artists and the work we are excited by. We do not want to create shows that illustrate an essay, or that begin with an idea, which is then clumsily imposed upon the work. I like to think of it as “curatorial exegesis”—an approach that begins with trying to understand and respond to individual works of art (or an individual body of work), and which affords primacy to the visual-tactile language of the art form. In my experience, this approach tends to produce exhibitions that work on two levels: they are instantly accessible because they retain their visual-tactile potency or “charisma”—but they can also reward visitors who want to delve further into their critical background.
The works included in the exhibition are all layered with imagery and symbolism from art history, yet each one has the power to speak to us today. Ori Gersht’s Falling Bird, from his recent filmic trilogy, draws upon Chardin’s still life compositions as a means of exploring relationships between the photographic image and objective reality. Filippo Caramazza also borrows from the still life tradition, dismantling and reassembling masterpieces into new forms in order to re-contextualize them within the perception of the present moment, whilst commenting on the process of appropriation itself. Similarly Bouke de Vries’ fractured still life sculptures, constructed from reclaimed china, glass, and pottery inhabit the style of the Dutch Golden age whilst instilling new virtues and values for his objects. Other works within the exhibition also engage with specific art historical references and artists. Henrietta Simson’s recent paintings reference the frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, whilst Michael Whittle’s monochromatic, drawings from his Dark Ages series borrow from the works of Medieval artists such as Bosch and Bondel. Other artists, such as Esther Teichmann, inhabit styles, invoking the vocabulary of a period of art history whilst fusing it with modern-day commentary.
In The Borrowed Loop meanings are disrupted, hierarchies challenged, and alternative narratives constructed. The exhibition, which includes painting, works on paper, sculpture, installation, and video, calls into question ideas of authenticity and authorship, and the dissemination of the image in contemporary culture.
