Christian Frosch “Wait”
frosch & portmann
This event has ended.
frosch&portmann presents Wait, the first U.S. solo exhibition by Munich based artist Christian Frosch.
The artist refers to his studio as his laboratory; artistic research describes Frosch’s practice more accurately than classical categories such as painting or drawing. At the beginning of the process stands an idea and the material — seeking no specific outcome or end-product. The act is minimal; opening a can of paint, shipping drawing tools in a box or pouring boats lacquer into a plastic cup. A formally trained artist, Frosch disengaged himself from actively working with brush and pencil. His work is the material — his intervention from non-existent to very little. After an initial input, Frosch lets his art happen, he waits and assumes the role of observer.
As part of two ongoing series “Panta Rhei” and “Papierversand” (paper shipment), the works in Wait are specifically developed for this exhibition. For “Panta Rhei” (everything flows), Christian Frosch fills a plastic cup on a white pedestal with a certain brand of boats paint; then he waits. The chemical reaction between plastic and paint leads to the shrinkage of the cup and eventually the paint flows out. Again, more time passes, the paint dries and the sculpture reaches its final state.
A couple of weeks ago, “Papierversand” arrived from Germany in two huge cardboard boxes. They remain closed until the artist gets to New York, opens his shipment and discovers what happened during the long journey, discovers his drawings. Back in Munich, Frosch loosely put pastel chalk and paper in several smaller cartons, packed those in bigger boxes and mailed them off to the U.S. The drawing displayed on the gallery wall created itself in transit and documents the journey from Germany to the United States.
Christian Frosch’s oeuvre is about the process, about experimentation. Various forces and factors add to the completion of a work by the German artist; chemistry and physics play a significant role, but also people, unaware of their artistic actions, contribute to the process. And significantly, the factor time — wait.
Christian Frosch lives and works in Munich, Germany. He studied at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich (where he was assistant to Prof. Res Ingold from 2006 - 2012) and at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Frosch was a visiting artist at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2010). In 2011, he taught a workshop “colour and paint” in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
His works are in collections such as the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung, the Nomas Foundation in Rome, Italy or the Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
The gallery will be closed on Thanksgiving and Friday, Nov 29 and open the weekend Nov 30/Dec1.
Media
Schedule
from November 27, 2013 to January 12, 2014
Opening Reception on 2013-11-27 from 18:00 to 20:00