ADRIAN FALKNER: SPOLIA
21 JANUARY – 26 MARCH 2023
POP;68 BISMARCKSTRASSE 68 | 50672 COLOGNE
Adrian Falkner presents his first solo exhibition Spolia at Pop;68 in Cologne. He reappropriates own, finished works, transforms them and embeds them into new contexts.
Thus they incorporate an ambiguity and cannot be clearly attributed to any discipline or genre. They transcend the separation of art in public spaces and art in institutions by creating – aware of all specific possibilities and limitations – their own architecture from elements inherent to both spaces.
Image courtesy of Ruttkowski;68
Topsoil of the work is coarse, rough linen fabric, which has collected traces of life on the studio floor for several years, preserving a part of the environment in which it is embedded, before it becomes the motif carrier. Similar to surfaces in public spaces, the unplanned and the intuitive become part of the medium while the artist turns into its architect by cutting up and rejoining canvases using a sewing machine.
Image courtesy of Ruttkowski;68
In several construction steps, the separation between background and motif, front and back, appropriation and design, blur and typefaces emerge that want to be looked at rather than read. Through an unconventional hanging comprising the use of construction components, the works themselves turn into architectural elements of the gallery space and allow a contemplation of their backs. Spolia plays with the translation of an inside and an outside through painting, and in doing so enables the recognition of the potential of interstices as a permeable means of communication.
©2023 Adrian Falkner, Ruttkowski;68
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