Mattias Merdan “Silly Sculptures”
Viridian Artists, Inc.
This event has ended.
Viridian Artists presents “SILLY SCULPTURE”, an exhibition of new sculpture and prints by MATTHIAS MERDAN.
These days we often wonder how the discipline of visual arts could still have a perceivable chance of making an impact. Has art reached the end of its evolutionary possibilities? Is it stagnated in its existing forms?
Artist Matthias Merdan’sanswer is “Silly Sculptures”. These slightly larger than life sculptures of figures bring together what the artist calls the “five futilities or “irrelevances”. The artist has carefully contemplated their actions, gesticulations, positioning, colors and outfits as unified contradictions, so that the sculptures radiate absurdity and clumsiness.
The “actions” of the Silly Sculptures are characterized by everyday banality, unfettered by pathos, purity and compulsions. Their actions are not the gesticulations of heroes but instead they stand shakily and illogically. Their colors too are inconsistent. Using chalk, lacquer, oil, acrylic and adhesive tape, the artist wants to prevent any suspicion that he is creating a cohesive design and deliberately leaves his traces of fingerprints and wipes. It’s as if Merdan is attempting to provoke us to conduct comparisons with the possible and to reorganize our knowledge.
Accessories of hats and gasmasks are more than just additional visual attributes, but serve as a metaphor for the extreme distance he has traveled from the mind, tradition and world of the beholder.
Merdan’s sculptures are mobile, changeable, and anatomically adjustable, responding to space as well as to situations. With the sculpture are prints and photos of their passing poses. With these highly expressive, but dissonant works, Merdan aims to bend the common clichés of aesthetics in an effort to bet on the inexhaustible potential of the visual arts. With these creations, he seizes the innovative opportunity and evolutionary possibilities inherent in sculpture and consequently creates a novel form of expression.
Mattias Merdan lives in Zurich, Switzerland and is presenting his first solo exhibit at Viridian. He has a Master of Philosophy and Theology from Bamberg University in Germany. In 2000, he did a residency in Nafpaktos, Greece to study iconography and from 2006-2011, he led international workshop in the manufacturing of carbon and fiberglass. He has been a professional sculptor since 2008.
Media
Schedule
from June 09, 2015 to June 27, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-06-11 from 18:00 to 20:00