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7
THEA DJORDJADZE, ROBERT ELFGEN, DANIEL MAN, GERDA SCHEEPERS, GERT & UWE TOBIAS, MARTIN WÖHRL
August 3 - September 30, 2005

7 brings together a group of contemporary Germany artists working across varied media and disciplines in an exploration of conceptual ideas and the constructed mythologies that inspire them.

Thea Djordjadze, born 1971 in Tbilisi in the Georgian Republic, combines found objects with the everyday materials surrounding us such as fabric, glass, wood, metal and ceramics in a practice that is informed by specific areas of interest. Djordjadze's influences draw widely from music and literature as well as early Modernism with particular reference to the Surrealists. These rich areas of interest contribute to Djordjadze's sophisticated layering of the art historical alongside a strong process based working style. Djordjadze is currently working on sculpture for a public site in Munich; a kaleidoscopic glass structure large enough to physically enter, which explores the contradictions of the urban habitat.

Born in South Africa in 1979, Gerda Scheepers builds sculptures from the familiar fabric of the everyday. Alongside household objects and materials, Scheepers uses fashionable textiles, resisting their immediate stylish or retro qualities and coaxing them into amorphous objects that are indistinct and oddly decipherable in same breath. Scheepers' work The Dead Corner is made from brown corduroy stitched together to form a mysterious disjointed spectre that rests snugly in the corner of Sprüth Magers Lee; an indistinguishable and unclassifiable form. Scheepers' elegant approach to the poetics of everyday objects are skilfully manoeuvred and are evocative of the work of Richard Artschwager and Robert Therrien.

In the work of Robert Elfgen, religious and personal mythologies take centre stage. Born 1972 in Wesseling, Germany, Elfgen transforms the given exhibition space, manipulating diverse media while playfully setting narrative guidelines and developing a network of connections between homelands, journeys and their boundaries. Elfgen's work within the show, Star Fighter, is a disconcerting and beautifully crafted missile and is the product of the artist's interest in the emotional split within the weapon's purpose. Both comforters and avengers, images of two arch-angels flank the missile as testament to this divide.

Notions of a homeland also play a central role in the work of Daniel Man who grew up in Augsburg, Germany moving there shortly after his birth in England in 1969. Contrary to Elfgen's deeply nostalgic approach to his hometown near Bonn and Wesseling, Man is symbolically in search of his roots. A keen traveller and the son of Chinese parents, Man is familiar with diverse cultures, deftly blending his experiences of their themes and aesthetics in his paintings and installations. Man's large scale sculpture Dragon Lamp, is an ideal relic of such ideas, mimicking the form of the generic lantern found in Chinese restaurants it is an extreme amplification. Accessible from one side like a pavilion, the sculpture is both the familiar lamp from the restaurant and at the same time a new location in itself and for the purpose of this exhibition it is now aptly displaced into the city of Man's birth - London.

Twin brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias, born in 1973 in Kronstadt Brasov in Romania, draw directly upon the clichés of their Transylvanian origin, utilizing their collective imaginations to play out and work through these stories to dramatic effect. These acts of storytelling externalize themselves in the form of large-format coloured wood cuts that range from straight and dewy folkloristic retellings to a sharp critique on inaccurate representation as a negative phenomenon.

Martin Wöhrl, born in 1974 in Munich, Germany, uses materials from DIY stores alongside the urban detritus easily found jettisoned in skips. To the Western world they are familiar and accessible: fixing plates laminated with synthetic, Formica, adhesive letters, cellular rubber, cardboard, carpet and pieces of furniture. A skilled craftsman Wöhrl adopts his own technique of converting the materials and their meaning. In the work Carl, Wöhrl clearly refers to Carl Andre's Weathering Piece (1970), using industrially produced carpet squares in six characteristically dull colours. Wöhrl playfully imitates a work that usually demands reverence within the art world, however famously ridiculed in its day. Wöhrl's work is characterized by this refined and ironic play with the art world's shaky constructed realities and its own folklore.

Each of the artists included within the show looks at the flawed dynamics of representation and its ensuing and inevitable misrepresentation. The galleryis pleased to provide a space for these acts of storytelling within the context of a strong and cohesive group show.


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