Second Hand
curated by Jasper sharp
Engholm Engelhorn Gallery, Vienna
The simple brief of this exhibition, which brings together the work of thirteen artists from twelve different countries, is to examine in a quiet and occasionally playful manner the contrasting approaches of those artists in their handling of found paper, card and film.
All of us, at one time or another, have taken liberty with images that we come across in newspapers or magazines, with posters pasted on street corners or the packaging on our dinner tables. The same
curiosity and youthful irreverence that provoked Marcel Duchamp to delicately deface a reproduction of
La Joconde almost a century ago has encouraged generations of artists since to make their own marks on the images that surround them. There are many examples of such activity, and this exhibition can only provide a glimpse of the ways in which artists today are working to make sense of, and stir our
awareness of, the bombardment of visual images to which we are continually subjected.
The artists presented here fall, very loosely, into three separate categories. The first group each modify,
add to, or remove by erasure or concealment, elements of existing images: Micol Assaël (b. 1979, Italy); Anna Barriball (b. 1972, England); Christian Capurro (b. 1968, Australia); Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980, France); Christian Holstad (b. 1972, United States).
The second involves those who collage together materials from different visual sources in order to
create new, distorted narratives or formal arrangements: Haris Epaminonda (b. 1980, Cyprus);
Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez (b. 1974, Costa Rica); Armando Andrade Tudela (b. 1975, Peru).
And the third, most broad constituency, brings together a number of artists whose work involves less
direct intervention, based on an ordering and reconfiguration of found images or documents and their aesthetic, romantic or psychological charge: Jacob Dahlgren (b. 1970, Sweden); Elizabeth McAlpine
(b. 1973, England); SECOND HAND curated by Jasper Sharp (b. 1970, Austria); Valeska Soares (b. 1957, Brazil);
Belen Rodriguez (b. 1981, Spain).
Participating artists:
Micol Assael / Anna Barriball / Christian Capurro / Jacob Dahlgren / Haris Epaminonda /Cyprien Gaillard /
Christian Holstad / Elizabeth McAlpine / Belen Rodriguez / Hans Schabus / Valeska Soares / Armando Andrade Tudela |
