October 20 - 23, 2011
Grand Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris
http://www.fiac.com
RIBBON
Florian Schmidt’s solo presentation for FIAC consists of three interrelated works which are all intended to be hung on the wall. Although they have been materially processed in different ways, they are interconnected through the use of common materials. Hanging them on the wall indicates they were originally paintings, but they are all the result of a sculptural gesture.
Untitled(Ribbon), 2010-2011, is the key work of this project. It was made over a period of one year and started as two different paintings. These two paintings were then assembled as a two-sided painting, standing upright in space like a sculpture. It ended up as a three-dimensional assemblage hung on the wall. The title refers to this process and evokes an infinite loop.
In Untitled(Reservoir), 2011, the cut out pieces of canvas left over from the first work are pieced together to make a complex and dense form. The work is an inversion (negative extension) of Untitled (Ribbon).
Untitled (Position), 2011, is composed of a small single painting that has been inserted into a large empty canvas. Canvas - the traditional medium of painting - becomes the frame of a small object. And its exhibition place in a way. The small single painting is made of stretcher frames and bits and pieces left over from Untitled (Ribbon).
For several years now, Florian Schmidt has been working on closely connected sculptural and painterly elements. Elements of primary pieces, whether they are painterly or sculptural, are re-used and transformed within new works. The re-use and transformation engage a dialog with art history. Frames, canvases, collages, papier maché and cardboard are assembled together forming a fluid typology of elements.
In this way, Florian Schmidt’s investigation has a lot to do with early European Avant-gardes; as the nature of his work explores the primary support of the “art object”. He practices three-dimensional actions within two-dimensional space and puts painterly items in a sculptural situation. Frameworks or pedestals are treated as content, exploring the boundaries of painting and objects in space. Florian Schmidt reenacts basic sculptural gestures: modeling, carving, layering, but does it through his personal system of addition and subtraction. In the process, painted parts get recovered; structures overlap and disappear from view, but the traces of these past actions remain.
