Under Erasure

Candice Breitz
John Duncan
Richard Galpin
Ken Gonzales-Day
Idris Khan
Lidwien van de Ven

Preview: Tuesday June 10th 6-8pm
Exhibition continues until July 26th 2008

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios presents Under Erasure, a group show where the interplay between what is concealed and revealed makes evident the power of erasure as subject and process in contemporary art. The title owes something to Jaques Derrida the French philosopher who used the strategy of deletion (already developed by Heidigger ) or ‘Sous Rature’ as a means to convey the inadequacy of language to accurately define ideas.

Within the realm of the Visual Arts, erasure has been a consistent and effective tool for artists even before (but especially since) Robert Rauschenberg carried out his elaborate gesture of erasing a drawing by Willem De Kooning using forty rubber erasers, then appropriating the destroyed drawing as his own artwork. The practitioners of erasure have been many and include amongst others Jasper Johns, Joseph Kosuth and Anne Hamilton. The genre has by now become both varied and extensive so in this instance it was essential to narrow the focus. With one exception, Under Erasure has a mainly photographic emphasis and several of the pieces selected demonstrate the photographic capacity for revealing the imprint, the barely discernible trace, the scored surface as well as the omissions and silences of history.

The six artists the show all have established international reputations. Ken Gonzalez Day’s project has been to document those places where lynchings occurred in the state of California between 1850 and 1935. The majority of these lynchings were of Latin Americans, a fact that is not so generally known. Richard Galpin produces dynamic and fantastical works that are derived from the artist's own photographs of chaotic cityscapes. Using a scalpel Galpin scores and peels away the emulsion from the surface of the photograph to produce a radical revision of the urban form. Lidwien van de Ven’s work addresses subjects that are both overtly and covertly political, in a way that allows the viewer to find the subject for themselves The over painted regimental banner is part of a series of work that continues John Duncan’s examination of Belfast in the post ceasefire period. Candice Breitz’s deletions use the technique of ‘whiting out’ as an imagistic device where the blanked-out pages of the cheap romance provoke an almost salacious interest by virtue of the words retained for exposure. Lastly, Idris Khan’s ‘Every… page of the Holy Quran’ layers and over layers the sacred text to the point of illegibility, the blurred lines resembling, as Brian Dillon has noted, ‘the palimpsests of antiquity’.

Ken Gonzales-Day will deliver a lecture entitled Lynching in the West on Wednesday 11th June at 1.15pm. Please contact press@templebargallery.com for bookings and further details.

Richard Galpin lives and works in London. He has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. Most recently he presented a solo exhibition at Brancolini Grimaldi, Rome. He has also exhibited at the British Museum, Jones Truenbach gallery, Cologne, Galaria Leme Sao Paulo, John Michael Kohler Art Center Wisconsin, USA, University of the Arts Gallery, London, and Roebling Hall, New York. His work can be found in various private and public collections in the UK, Europe and beyond. He is represented by Hales Gallery, London.

Candice Breitz was born in Johannesburg in 1972, and is currently based in Berlin, where she has been Professor of Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art since 2007.

In 2007 she won the Prix International d’Art Contemporain from the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. Her work is represented in public and private collections worldwide, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. She has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, including White Cube, London, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam.

Ken Gonzales-Day lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from UC Irvine, and his MA in Art History from Hunter College (C.U.N.Y). He was a fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program. Other fellowships include the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio (Italy), and the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, where Gonzales-Day was a Senior Fellow in Latino Studies. His book, Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 was published by Duke University Press in 2006. Gonzales-Day is a Professor, and was Chair of the Department of Art at Scripps College (2003-2008). He has exhibited extensively in the USA and Europe. Solo exhibitions include: Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; Highways, Santa Monica; SPACE, Portland, Maine; LAXART, Los Angeles; CUE Art Foundation, NYC; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; Susanne Vielmetter Projects, Los Angeles; Deep River, Los Angeles; Cristinerose Gallery, NYC; White Columns White Room, NYC.

Lidwien van de Ven was born in 1963 in Hulst, the Netherlands, and now lives and works in Rotterdam and Berlin. She has won several prizes for her photographic work and installations, she exhibits regularly at gallery Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and at Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerp. In 2007 she exhibited at Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany.

Idris Khan received his BA from the University of Derby in 2000 and his MA from the Royal College of Art in 2003. He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including those at the Taidehalli in Helsinki, Musée de l'Elysée in Switzerland, and Victoria Miro in London. He recently completed the cover art for Editors album An End Has A Start which utilises techniques he used in his Becher on Becher series of industrial buildings.He is represented by Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, Yvon Lambert, Paris & New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

John Duncan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland 1968 where he currently lives. He studied Documentary Photography at Newport, Wales and then Fine Art Photography at Glasgow School of Art. His work has been shown in various solo and group exhibitions including, Imago, Centre of Photography Salamanca 1997, Stills Gallery Edinburgh 1998, On the Bright Side of Life, Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst Berlin 1998, Gallery of Photography Dublin 2002, Belfast Exposed 2003, Photography Towards a Sculptural Impulse, Dazibao Montréal 2006, Gimpel Fils London 2006, East, Norwich Gallery 2006, Loaded Landscapes, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago 2007. His new work Bonfires will be published by Steidl in July.

Press Contact: Rayne Booth - Temple Bar Gallery & Studios - t. + 353 1 671 0073 - e. press@templebargallery.com