Sunday, November 30, 2008

if ARTwalk: Salon I & II: December 11- 24, 2008

For exhibition installation images, click here.


THE SALON I & II
Dec. 11 – 24, 2008
an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations:
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios
808 Lady Street
&
if ART Gallery
1223 Lincoln Street

Reception and ifART Walk: Thursday, Dec. 11, 5 – 10 p.m.
at and between both locations
Opening Hours:
Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.
& by appointment
Open Christmas Eve until 7 p.m.

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:
(803) 255-0068/ (803) 238-2351 – if-art-gallery@sc.twcbc.com

For its December 2008 exhibition, if ART Gallery presents The Salon I & II, an exhibition at two Columbia, SC, locations: if ART Gallery and Gallery 80808/Vista Studios. On Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m., if ART will hold opening receptions at both locations. The ifART Walk will be on Lady and Lincoln Streets, between both locations, which are around the corner from each other.

The exhibitions will present art by if ART Gallery artists, installed salon-style at both Gallery 80808 and if ART. Artists in the exhibitions include two new additions to if ART Gallery, Columbia ceramic artist Renee Rouillier and the prominent African-American collage and mixed-media artist Sam Middleton, an 81-year-old expatriate who has lived in the Netherlands since the early 1960s.

Other artists in the exhibition include Karel Appel, Aaron Baldwin, Jeri Burdick, Carl Blair, Lynn Chadwick, Steven Chapp, Stephen Chesley, Corneille, Jeff Donovan, Jacques Doucet, Phil Garrett, Herbert Gentry, Tonya Gregg, Jerry Harris, Bill Jackson, Sjaak Korsten, Peter Lenzo, Sam Middleton, Eric Miller, Dorothy Netherland, Marcelo Novo, Matt Overend, Anna Redwine, Paul Reed, Edward Rice, Silvia Rudolf, Kees Salentijn, Laura Spong, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Bram van Velde, Katie Walker, Mike Williams, David Yaghjian, Paul Yanko and Don Zurlo.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Essay: Silvia Rudolf

War Series: Horizon, 2007
Oil pastel on canvas board
14 x 11 in.
$ 575

SILVIA RUDOLF
By Wim Roefs
2008

Silvia Rudolf sits on the fence between non-objectivity and a representational but abstracted approach to painting and drawing. In either case, she does a lot with little. Her work has a high level of economy in terms of materials, lines, marks, pallet and the like. With sure, lively but raw lines and marks, a few colors and a good bit of negative space, she creates exciting, often sparse compositions that are at once expressive and understated.

“Mostly I start working with a line, a movement, a dot,” Rudolf says. “Or one special color – orange maybe. I work this way both on paper and canvas. Sometimes, I have a certain idea, a theme, inspired by poetry, music or by a photograph. Then I try to find an adequate expression, work around it and with it, often making a series to explore a subject more deeply.”

Rudolf’s series include Medea, five small oil paintings interpreting and visualizing the Greek myth. Several series have taken late-19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as their theme. One of them, Friedrich Nietzsche: Seelenlandschaften (Landscapes Of The Soul) of 2000, consists of nine, 8” x 8”, seemingly non-objective panels in grays and grayish blues, dirty whites and carbon marks that develop a certain rhythm and intensity as the series progresses. Another, Nietzsche – Ein Mensch (A Human Being) consists of four, 8” x 8” panels, each depicting a flesh-toned, perhaps agonizing figure against a split background of browns and pinkish whites.

Nietzsche – Ein Mensch is in the current exhibition, as are 11 panels from Rudolf’s War series, including the triptych War I, II and III. With a pallet of only grays, orange-reds and different degrees of dirty whites, Rudolf uses to great effect a combination of drawing and painting. By placing vigorous, grayish lines and marks on top, above or below solid orange-red fields of different heights but flush left-to-right, therefore splitting the canvas horizontally, the work has at once a stark post-Minimalist and Abstract-Expressionist feel. 

The two works from her Bodies series in the current show are burst of energy in mostly the same pallet as the War series, but without the stark division of the plane, the minimalism is limited to the abundance of negative space surrounding the action. In her Walking Figures series, Rudolf uses a solid rectangle to set off the quickly sketched figures rather than to split the field.

“Sometimes I work the same image over and over,” Rudolf says. “ I’ll add another layer, take away one and leave it for days, weeks. In a given moment I try to ‘discover’ what’s inside the work and ‘carve’ it out.

But it’s all about ‘visualizing,’ making visible my way of seeing things.”

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Resume: Silvia Rudolf

Medea 3, 2007
Oil on canvas
12 x 12 in.


SILVIA RUDOLF
Resume

Silvia Rudolf was born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1957.
She attended The Fachhochschule in Kaiserslautern (1976 – 1982) and graduated in interior design and drawing.  
Since 1982 she’s been working as an artist.
From 1994 to 2000 she stayed in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she founded the group “transit”.
Back in Germany in 2000 she joined the Künstlerwerkgemeinschaft in Kaiserslautern.
She is currently living in New York.

Silvia Rudolf showed her works in solo shows and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Germany, Argentina, Ecuador, France, Denmark and USA.


Group shows since 1982 (selection)

Hans-Purrmann-Contest, Speyer, Germany
„Utopías“, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina
I.Biennale of Modern Art, Museo de las Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Kulturspinderiets”, Silkeborg, Dänemark
Projekt TRANSIT in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Manta, Bahía de Cáraquez, Ecuado
Symposium „De la Tour et les Autres“, St. Quentin, Frankreich
"Boot," Kunstverein Mittelrhein, Koblenz, Germany


Solo shows since 1982 (selection)

Kunstverein Pforzheim, Germany
Instituto Escolar Goethe, Buenos Aires, Argentina
"De dos Lados," Frank-Löbsches-Haus in Landau, German
"El Borde" with A.Perez-Molek, Museos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Monday, March 10, 2008

Abstracted in Nature: March 21-April 1, 2008

if ART
presents at
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios
808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

ABSTRACTED IN NATURE:
Reiner Mährlein – Silvia Rudolf – Laura Spong

March 21 – April 1, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, March 21, 5 – 10 p.m.
Opening Hours:
Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.
Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:
(803) 238-2351 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For its March exhibition, if ART presents at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios Abstracted In Nature, featuring Columbia artist Laura Spong and German artists Reiner Mährlein and Silvia Rudolf. Spong will present a new series of her non-objective paintings. The work includes Good Report, Bad Report, No Report, a 2007 composite painting of 100 x 80 inches, consisting of 25 paintings of 20 x 16 inches each, arranged in a five-by-five grid. Rudolf will show non-objective and abstracted, figurative paintings and drawings. Mährlein will show large and small metal-and-granite sculptures as well as one-of-a-kind rust prints and embossings.

Mährlein (German, b. 1959) is a widely acclaimed artist in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. He is part of a regular exchange between artists from Columbia and its German sister city, Kaiserslautern. Mährlein studied art in Nuremberg and at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieur de Beaux-Arts in Paris. He has created large, public sculptures throughout his home region and has exhibited widely throughout Europe. The medium for both of Mährlein’s art forms is granite and steel. Mährlein creates the prints by pressing rusty steel plates against paper and paper against granite surfaces. This results in abstract works with a rich and rough, three-dimensional and architectural feel.

Rudolf (German, b. 1957), who received her art education in Kaiserslautern, lived in Argentina between 1994 and 2000. There, she founded the artist group “transit.” In the past two years, she has lived in New York. Her work has been in solo and group exhibitions in Germany, the United States, Argentina and several other European and Latin American countries. Group shows include the first Biennale of Modern Art at the Museo de las Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her solo shows include one at the Museos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Columbia, S.C., artist Laura Spong (b. 1926) is among South Carolina’s most prominent non-objective painters. In the past two years, Spong has further increased her reputation with four solo exhibitions, including a retrospective at the University of South Carolina’s McMaster Gallery. For her 2006 exhibition, Laura Spong at 80, Columbia’s if ART published a 32-page catalogue. In addition to the S.C. State Art Collection, Spong’s work was purchased recently by the Greenville (S.C.) County Museum of Art and the S.C. State Museum. Three of her paintings also are in the Contemporary Carolina Collection, which was established in 2008 at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Ashley River Tower in Charleston.

Friday, February 15, 2008

The Inventory: February 15-26, 2008

Walking Figures III, 2007
Mixed media on paper
27 1/2 x 19 1/2 in
$975


if ART
presents at
Gallery 80808/Vista Studios
808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

THE INVENTORY:
A Group Show of if ART artists

Feb. 15 – 26, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, Feb. 15, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:
Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.
Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:
(803) 238-2351 – wroefs@sc.rr.com

For its February exhibition, if ART presents The Inventory, a group exhibition of artists from if ART Gallery. The show will consist of many new works by if ART artists as well as older pieces from the gallery’s inventory.

Included in the show will be work by Columbia artists Jeff Donovan, Mary Gilkerson, Marcelo Novo, Anna Redwine and David Yaghjian. Other South Carolina artists include Carl Blair, Jeri Burdick, Phil Garrett, Bill Jackson, Peter Lenzo, Dorothy Netherland, Matt Overend, Edward Rice, Tom Stanley, Christine Tedesco, H. Brown Thornton, Leo Twiggs, Katie Walker and Paul Yanko. Furthermore, the show will present work by former South Carolina residents Tonya Gregg, Eric Miller and Andy Moon. Also included are California collage artist Jerry Harris, Dutch painter Kees Salentijn and German artists Roland Albert, Klaus Hartmann and Silvia Rudolf.