Benedikt Braun, Alexis Knowlton, Patrick McElnea
April 30 – June 13, 2009
Schalter is pleased to announce its new exhibition, BUTTER HIGH. The exhibition will present the work of three artists: Benedikt Braun (DE), Alexis Knowlton (US), and Patrick McElnea (US). The show features installation, sculpture, collage, painting and drawing.
Butter High began in the form of a challenge, inviting two artists to consider and work with, around, against or in relation to a preselected work of art within the small space of Schalter. The preselected work was 'Zu viel verlangt' (Asked for too much), by German artist Benedikt Braun. The presentation format's circuitous tension explores collaboration between the individual art works, the exhibition space, curation and artists.
Benedikt Braun's work employs everyday objects and events as means to explore the ethics and codes that regulate our collective reality. By highlighting and fixating on gestures as simple as saying 'Good Morning,' or stooping to pick up loose change on the sidewalk, Braun's work returns our world to us estranged and afresh. 'Zu viel verlangt', puns on desire and its consequences, extending the lines of a child's swing set to tragic length. Braun has been included in numerous group exhibitions and was recently selected to represent Weimar's Bauhaus University in the 'Ring Frei' competition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn.
The work of Berlin-based, American artist, Alexis Knowlton intentionally bumps into genres of abstract painting. Her process relies on a sense of play and scale in the work to derive a critical tension. 'Butter High' presents the viewer with a sheet of felt that has been painted on, only to be rolled up and hung as a tube near the ceiling; a specific object with texture, color, sheen, shape and size. Here Knowlton refutes notions of closure, exemplified by the tube's pink gestural line, a line that is interrupted when the painting is flipped in on itself. Knowlton attended the Rhode Island School of Design for her BFA and Yale University School of Art for her MFA in painting. She has exhibited in New York and San Francisco.
Patrick McElnea also lives and works in Berlin, where he moved following his MFA at Yale. For Butter High, he has included a series of colored pencil drawings and one collage. The drawings are conceptually motivated, often using the history of abstract painting as a starting point. All of the work is constructed through a ritualistic gesture, which seen as a tick of the hand, focuses on the surface as both a literal and meta ground. Similarly, his collage 'Greatest Hits,' offers multiple readings depending on the viewer's proximity to the surface. McElnea also works in video.
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