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EXPERIMENTS ON FORM 形式实验 GARCIA FRANKOWSKI
INTELLIGENTSIA GALLERY 智先 画廊
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EXPERIMENTS ON FORM 形式实验 GARCIA FRANKOWSKI
25 January 2014 2014 年 01 月 25日
Experiments on Form Intelligentsia Gallery is pleased to present Garcia Frankowski: Experiments on Form. Form provides Beijing-based duo Cruz Garcia (1983) and Nathalie Frankowski (1985) with the philological tools to provide ontological forms of communication. An interest that shifts from discipline to discipline, form is always present in their work, from their theoretical texts and publications, to their buildings, to their collages, paintings and animations. The series presented in the opening show of Intelligentsia Gallery dissects a microcosm of the topics they address through form-making. ‘Experiments on Form’ present a selection of paintings, collages and objects as a tool of research of a search that can be traced back a hundred years to Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) and that has oscillated since then from Vitebsk to Dusseldorf, from Sao Paolo to New York . While abstraction implies having the world as a point of reference and reducing it to abstract representation, the experiments of Garcia Frankowski on pure form in the realm of art discard the world as the origine, as the object to be imitated, creating a new order radically indifferent to the real as reference. If for Malevich pure form implied ‘pure feeling’, for Garcia Frankowski form becomes a code for the ‘pure communication’ of ideas. The gallery is used as an incubator, in which every piece presented, including paintings and objects, interacts, activates and alters space, experience and meaning. The exhibition explores the potential of form as a tool to communicate ideas, to provide meaning and create content. Space always plays a seminal role in their understanding of form. But while in their architectures space is the goal, to create, define, and improve space, in their ‘Experiments on Form’ space becomes a medium through which ideas can be communicated. Space becomes a trait d’union between the forms and the public, between signifier and signified, between concept and meaning. Keeping up with the experimental character of Intelligentsia Gallery, ‘Experiments on Form’ offers a glimpse of a work in progress, of an unfolding experiment. Intelligentsia Gallery
形式实验 形式，为位于北京的双人组Cruz Garcia (1983)和 Nathalie Frankowski (1985)提供了新的自由，去发现与 探索思想交流的丰富途径，并以此超越我们周遭环境的经验。他们的兴趣在不同学科中切换，但”形式”一 直贯穿其作品，从理论到出版物，从建筑到拼贴、绘画、动画作品。 智先画廊开幕展览中的系列作品是他们通过形式创作来剖析问题的一个缩影。“形式实验”选择以油画、拼 贴、物件为载体，研究追溯了Kazimir Malevich’s 的黑色方块（1915）以及其后一百多年来艺术的变化摇 摆，从维帖布斯克到杜塞尔多夫，从圣保罗到纽约。 如果说抽象意味着将现实世界作为一个参照点并将其简化至抽象表现，Garcia Frankowski对于纯粹形式 的实验则不再将世界作为其来源或被模仿的物体，而是创造一种与现实极度无关的新秩序。 对Malevich来 说，纯粹形式意味着“纯粹的感觉”；对 Garcia Frankowski而言，形式成为思想的“纯粹交流方式”。画廊由 此成为孵化器，在其中每个展品，从油画到物件，都在相互作用，激活并改变着空间、经验与含义。展览 探索了形式作为沟通思想和创造意义的工具的可能性。 对于建筑师，空间始终扮演着激发其对形式理解的创造性角色。然而，在建筑中空间是其目的；在“形式 实验”中，空间成为了思维沟通的媒介。空间成为了形式与公众之间、能指与所指之间、概念与意义之间 的连接符。 保持着智先画廊的实验性，“形式实验”旨在展示过程中的作品和演化中的实验。
智先画廊
A SINCERE START Hao Chen
“Experiments on form” shows a mix of pristine and sophisticated quality. It seems like a hail to Malevich at first glimpse; yet it actually departs from the 1910s’ Suprematist, and shifts the meaning of the black creations. They are no longer individual paintings or objects once they are placed in this certain room, which subvert the way we experience Black Square. Admittedly, we can spend hours discussing the ideas and techniques in these art pieces. How they draw black on black reminding us of the white on white; how they oscillate between the three-dimension and flatness; how they reverse the darkness between objects and their shadows. However, the most intriguing quality I find in the exhibition is the space as a whole piece. The backdrop is not a canvas, a wall, a decent museum, but a small anonymous room somewhere in Beijing. The space is so confined and basic that everything gets more concentrated and interrelated; thus, the richness could emerge in the limitation with only few pieces at play. This condensed experience and experimental character has always been rooted in art, but somehow missing in high culture today. That’s why we appreciate the sincerity and primitivity the exhibition conveys ,which will be a powerful attitude fueling the Intelligentsia Gallery in the long run.
真诚的起点 陈昊
“形式实验“体现出原初与复杂的混合。他初看像是对Malevich的致敬；实则脱离了20世纪初的至上主义， 并改变了黑色创造物的意义。当这些创作被置于这个特定房间的时候，他们不再是单独的绘画或是物件， 他们颠覆了我们过去对“黑色方块”的体验。 诚然我们可以花很久讨论这些作品背后的思想和技巧。讨论他们如何以黑色上的黑色让我们联想起白色上 的白色，讨论作品是怎样在三维和扁平中摇摆，讨论他们怎样倒置了物体与其阴影的关系。 然而，展览最吸引我的特点在于，将其空间作为一件作品的整体来看待。作品的背景不是画布、墙、体面 的博物馆，而是隐匿于北京某处一个匿名狭小的房间。这个空间如此基本而局限，使每个物体都变得更为 集中和相关，而丰富性就得以通过很少的几件作品在有限的空间中产生出来。这种浓缩的体验和实验的特 征长久以来存在于艺术之中，而在当今的高雅艺术中却有所缺失。我们因而欣赏展览传递出的真诚与原初 感，它们将使智先画廊走的更远。
BLACK AND WHITE Guido Tesio
I. (Premise) INTELLIGENTSIA is a small gallery with big ambitions. INTELLIGENTSIA is not a private archive and showcase for artistic production, but a gathering place for confrontation. EXPERIMENTS ON FORM is the opening exhibition of INTELLIGENTSIA. Like every opening exhibition EXPERIMENTS ON FORM plays a special role in the definition of the artistic agenda of its curators, being somehow expected to set the path for upcoming events.
EXPERIMENTS ON FORM paradigmatically manifests the intentions of Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski. II. (Description) EXPERIMENTS ON FORM displays eight recent works by Wai Think Tank, providing an overview of Garcia Frankowski’s wide range of works, spanning from polyptych paintings to collages and sculptural models. Stretched out over the disciplinary discourse on architecture that constitutes their usual field of application, these Experiments on Form shed light on WAI’s purely artistic side. Garcia Frankowski’s approach to Abstraction focuses on the paradigmatic and archetypical nature of pure geometric Form, its ordinariness as well as its ambiguity. Through the recurrence of circles, squares and triangles the exhibition is arranged as a set of visual compositions employing concepts such as difference and repetition, proximity and distance, unity and fragmentation. The simple space of the gallery works as a pressure chamber, forcing the different works to interact with each other and abandon their own autonomy. Here, interaction and confrontation are not only desirable, but ultimately unavoidable and therefore consciously exploited. Each Experiment on Form is carefully intended to react with the others, therefore involving the viewer in a multiple but unitary experience. Through juxtaposition with the rest each piece is bound to a context that both supports it and interferes with its own possible understanding. III. (Fragments of a critical reading) The work of Garcia Frankowski is open to multiple readings, but not to any one. The most dangerous misunderstanding would be to misread the elementarism of their work for a certain minimalist aestheticism. Garcia Frankowski’ s art is abstract but definitely not Minimal. In fact, WAI shifts the focus from the Ontological and focuses on the Relative quality of form, from its supposed transcendental and permanent meaning to its availability to continuous conceptual re-appropriation. For Garcia Frankowski form is a tool not the goal. There is no metaphysics of form, no hidden meaning behind their squares, circles and triangles; their mystery is all in the surface. The Forms of Garcia Frankowski are deprived of any inner quality beyond their genericity and universality, that is to say, their instrumentality. Experiments on Form do not display objects to be silently revered but investigate the multiple and possible relationships between accessible and collective archetypes.
A square is a square, a circle is a circle, a triangle is a triangle. This tautological dimension is tactic. Garcia Frankowski’s forms have to be meaningless; in order to let meaning emerge out of their combination. Revisiting and exploiting the archetypical is Garcia Frankowski’ s way for originality. Purposely non romantic – unemotional and impersonal – Garcia Frankowski’ s art is not aimed at fixing on canvas the intimate struggles of its authors. Its language is conventional, not confessional. But what is the meaning of such a programmatic denial of the principle of authorship? What’s the ultimate scope of Garcia Frankowski’s Experiments on Form? Purposely meaningless, the art of Garcia Frankowski challenges the conventional relationship between art and viewer, its passivity in front of the work of art. What is exposed is in fact not the final results of Garcia Frankowski’ s experiments, but the experiments themselves, intended as an open process which the visitor is invited to proactively join. The lack of inner meaning, the absolute conventionality of this art is exactly what defines its immediate accessibility. Suggesting that art should deal more with the collective and anonymous processes than with the inventions of the individual. Experiments on Form is an invitation to contribute and participate in a shared experience. Experiment on Form is like a text. Like black letters over white paper, the pure Forms of Garcia Frankowski collide and combine in a process of semantic redefinition that is virtually always open. The combinatory and therefore reversible character of Garcia Frankowski’ s work - forms reacts without sublimating, without losing their own identity - defines a certain “ frozen” character of their work. Each composition is like the still frame of a dynamic process, somehow tempting the viewer to rearrange – mentally or physically - the composition in its own way, finding alternative formal relationships between the objects on the wall. In so doing Garcia Frankowski seems to revisit a typically modernistic trope; the paradigm of a progressive idea of art as “new moves” under established rules, the idea of art as the individual exercise of freedom within collectively shared boundaries. IV. (The problem of beauty. A question for possible debate) Is beauty still at the core of artistic expression? Is that its ultimate goal? Is an art focused on the analytical, the programmatic and the performative – thus deprived of any synthetical moment – capable to address beauty? Is beauty nothing more than a residual of past eras, a residual of religion in its supposed salvific power to transcend contingencies and address the eternal? Is beauty nothing more than a decadent leisure that avoids the real problems of life? Is beauty an issue for Garcia Frankowski?
Experiments on Form
形式实验
Black Circle on Black Background Oil on Canvas 1200X1200mm 2012
Black Square on Black Background Oil on Canvas 1200X1200mm 2012
Black Triangle on Black Background Oil on Canvas 1200X1200mm 2012
Untitled Collage 700x500mm 2014
Black Rectangle Oil on Canvas 2000x100mm 2013 Black Circle Oil on Canvas 40cmĂ˜ 2013
Wall Composition Installation Black Triangle Oil on Canvas 400x400x400mm 2013 Architecton Beta No. 2 100 x10cm x300 mm Oil Paint on Acrylic 2012-14 Two Black Squares Oil on Canvas 100x100mm 2014
Untitled (Landscape) Oil and Oil Stick on Wood 1000x50x50mm 600x50x50mm 2013
The Book of Shapes Artist’s Book Collages on Paper 110 Pages Unique 360 x 285 x 25mm 2014
Bio Garcia Frankowski (Beijing, China) Garcia Frankowski is an art group founded by Puerto Rican artist, architect, author and theorist Cruz Garcia (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1983) and French artist, architect, poet and theorist Nathalie Frankowski (Dundee, Scotland, 1985). They are also co-founders of Beijing-based WAI Architecture Think Tank. The work of Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Intelligentsia Gallery in Beijing, the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester and in shows in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Beijing, Paris, San Juan, Porto, Lisbon, Tokyo, Osaka, Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai, Helsinki, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, Prague, Bratislava, Milan, and Los Angeles. www.garciafrankowski.com
简介 Garcia Frankowski (b. 1983 & 1985) Garcia Frankowski是位于北京的艺术团体，由艺术家、建筑师、作家、理论Cruz Garcia（1983，圣胡 安，波多黎各）与艺术家、建筑师、诗人、理论家Nathalie Frankowski（1985，邓迪，苏格兰）创立。继 2008共同创办WAI Architecture Think Tank之后，Garcia Frankowski共同建立了位于北京的独立艺术空 间，智先画廊。他们的作品包括绘画、影像、拼贴、行为表演、装置、出版及其他。 Garcia Frankowski的个展与群展遍布世界，包括美国纽约当代艺术博物馆，德国维特拉设计博物馆，北 京智先画廊、北京偏锋新艺术空间、曼切斯特中国当代艺术中心，并参展于巴塞罗那、马德里、伦敦、北 京、巴黎、圣胡安、波尔图、里斯本、东京、大阪、墨尔本、悉尼、上海、赫尔辛基、芝加哥、布宜诺斯 艾利斯、智力圣地亚哥、蒙得维的亚、布拉格、布拉迪斯拉发、米兰、瓜达拉哈拉、苏黎世、洛杉矶等。 近期的出版物包括，形状岛屿文本：Garcia Frankowski的宣言（塞維利亞：Vibok Works，2014），纯粹 极致标志：一部关于纯粹形式的宣言（伦敦：Artifice Books on Architecture, 2013），儿童艺术书 小女孩 和太阳的故事，自出版系列What About It?杂志和艺术家书籍。 www.garciafrankowski.com
Acknowledgements 致谢 Intelligentsia Gallery would like to thank everybody involved in the realization of this exhibition. Without the enthusiasm of / 智先画廊感谢以下诸位对实现此次展览的帮助： Hao Chen / 陈昊; Zhang Yanping / 张燕 平; Ronald Frankowski, Joao Dias Pereira, Christian Melz, Guido Tesio, Yu Yi Hua, Chen Ling, ‘Experiments on Form’ wouldn’t be possible.
Intelligentsia Intelligentsia explores the relationship between art and life, between concepts and creation. Intelligentsia is a space for the conception and diffusion of ideas and their manifestation in the realm of contemporary art. Intelligentsia presents ideas in the form of texts, publications, images, pictures, photographs, paintings, performances, videos, objects, events. Intelligentsia offers collectible materials that communicate the ideas of artistic production. Intelligentsia creates a space for positions and oppositions, for dialogue and contradictions. Intelligentsia is a platform for converging projects, juxtaposing narratives, and conflicting art. Intelligentsia recognizes that diversity of projects create an intelligence of contemporary art. Intelligentsia is concerned with artistic production and artistic process. Intelligentsia is fueled with the intellectual discourse of art. Intelligentsia presents events as artistic production. Intelligentsia is an independent art space in Beijing. 智先 画廊 智先探索艺术与生活，观念与创作的关系。 概念在这一空间中孕育和传播，并以当代艺术的方式得以展现。 智先的思想通过文本、出版物、影像、图片、摄影、油画、表演、视频、物体、活动的形式呈现。 智先提供具有收藏意义的素材，传播艺术生产的理念。 智先的空间兼容了立场与对峙，对话与矛盾。 智先作为开放的平台，兼有趋同的项目、并置的叙事、冲突的艺术。 智先认识到当代艺术的智慧源于项目的多样性。 智先关注艺术生产及其产生过程。 智先以艺术的思辨讨论为驱动。 智先将活动作为一种艺术生产。 智先是位于北京的独立艺术空间。
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