BREACH
Aureliene Arbet & Jeremie Egry, Bianca Brunner, Jean Charles de Quillacq, Bryan Dooley
19th January - 18th February, 2012
Rod Barton Gallery, London EC1

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Rod Barton Gallery is pleased to present Breach, an exhibition focusing on four young artists who embrace photography’s plasticity and it’s ability to exist in multiple contexts. Taking advantage of the medium’s inherent instability, they further explore and challenge our understanding of the medium.

The title refers to both a breach of traditional photographic conventions and a rupture between real and virtual space. A photograph is paradoxical by nature: there is always a confliction between what it depicts and it’s physical existence as an object. Taking this paradox as a point of focus, participating artists create diverse work ranging from still-life photography to sculpture, pushing the medium to it’s elastic limits.

These works could be said to be multi-stable with a similar perceptual effect to that of the famous optical illusion Rubin’s vase. When one attempts to pin them down they slip into another realm: contexts are continuously shifting. These uneasy, anxious objects exist in a mercurial state where nothing is fixed. Instead meanings are multiple, as the constant state of transition creates a sense of unease and confusion.

Aurelien Arbet and Jeremie Egry’s series ‘Travaux Choisis’ adopts the guise of traditional still-life photography. Tools and objects are collected, brought together in the studio and shot against highly detailed and saturated backgrounds. Chosen and arranged according to their texture, colour and form, their symbolic values become secondary. Disparate content and meanings becomes fluid mingling together underneath the surface of the picture plane. The play on surface, mimicry and deception – both exacting and ambiguous – dismisses any narrative potential.

Hung in a tight grid, Bianca Brunner’s iridescent photographs, reminiscent of puddles of oil, aerial imagery and digital interference, deny any sense of scale. There is simultaneously a sense of intimacy and distance; a confusion of the material and the immaterial, real and virtual, haptic and optic. The viewer’s focus is passed around from work to work and oscillates between the surface of the photographic paper and the shimmering oil-like surface beneath. Made by pouring oil and water over black backdrop paper and photographing repeatedly in direct sunlight, they are made by completely analogue means yet suggest the digital.

For the series Trak Star Bryan Dooley spent six weeks photographing the NYU running team in New York. Reality is abstracted by document. The images reminiscent of studio still-lives, contain indexical references forming a proxy reality. Adhesive PVC prints fold around corners and slip onto the floor. Uncomfortable in their containment, they infest the gallery space. Photographic conventions are ruptured through manipulation of the photographic surface and it’s dimensions, causing the images to exist in a visceral space where the image as an object is situated in both the past and present, collapsing real and photographic space.

Jean Charles de Quillacq’s work reveals itself in an ambivalent and fragmentary manner. Elements are taken from previous work and recombined with new elements from where the object is produced or exhibited. Challenge Nathalie consists of a graduated painted steel structure on which hangs the artists’t-shirt. Transferred onto the t-shirt are photographic images depicting a previous installation of de Quilacq’s work (from the same series as shown in Rowena Hughes, Eddie Peake, Jean Charles de Quillacq at Rod Barton Gallery in 2010). These photographs generate a gap in the present – a portal to the works genealogy. Graduations of colours on the steel frame translate this transition – from one colour to another – as from one to state to another. Works are never finished but become producers of developing relationships: there is only process, never a conclusion. 

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Aurelien Arbet (b.1980) and Jeremie Egry (b. 1979) met in Grenoble, France and have been working together ever since. Upcoming exhibitions include Bookies, Helsinki Photo Biennale, Finland (2012); Good As New, Ed Varie, New York, USA (2012). Recent exhibitions include Flatten Image curated by Joshua Citarella and Jarrod Turner, The End, New York, USA (2011); Everyone is a Photographer Milieu Galerie, Bern, Switzerand (2011); Bartholomew, 12 Mail, Paris, France (2011); NRMAL, Mexico, Mexico City (2011); A New Idea of Landscape curated by Samuel Francois, Galerie de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy (2011); 43 livres d’artistes, à l’honneur au BAL, Le Bal, (2011); Le Garage, Arles, France (2010); Dysfashional, Berlin, Germany (2010); Stream, curated by Jennilee Marigomen and Andrew Laumann, Baltimore and Los Angeles, USA (2010); Dysfashional, Paris, France (2009).

Bianca Brunner was born in 1974, in Chur, Switzerland. Brunner completed her MA in photography at the Royal College of Art, London, UK in 2007 and her BA in Photography at the London College of Communication in 2004. Upcoming solo exhibitions include BolteLang, Zurich, Switzerland (2012); Rochester Art Centre, Rochester MN, USA (2012). Recent solo exhibitions include Sky with Clouds and Water, 401 Contemporary, London (2011); Gap in the Real, Manor Kunstpreis, Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Voyage Around My Room, curated by Becky Beasley, Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin, Italy (2011); Werkbeiträge Bildende Kunst, F+F Schule für Kunst und Mediendesign, Zurich, Switzerland (2011); Werk- und Atelierstipendien der Stadt Zürich, Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland (2011); Swiss Art Awards, Art Basel, Switzerland (2011); SYNC SYNC, 401 contemporary London Projects, UK (2011); Just Photography, curated by Ancient & Modern, London, UK and Martos Gallery, New York, USA (2011); After Dark, La Filature, Mulhouse, France (2011); Sous Sur Face, 401 contemporary Berlin, Germany (2011). Public collections include Manor Kunstsammlung, Switzerland. Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Switzerland. National Media Museum, Bradford, UK. Wilson Centre for Photography, London, UK. Statoil ASA, Norway. GKB Kunstsammlung, Chur, Switzerland. Aperture Foundation, New York, US. Museé de l’ Elyseé, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Bryan Dooley was born 1987 in Leeds, UK. He received his BA from the University of Wales, Newport in 2009 and will graduate from the Royal College of Art with an MA in photography later this year. Forthcoming exhibitions include SPRAUNUS, AWA Gallery, Amsterdam (2012); Leica Prize, {shortlisted for both exhibition and publication}(2012). Recent group exhibitions include Akzo Nobel. ‘Colour’. Henry Moore Gallery. London. UK (2011); How Looking gets in the way of Seeing. Twelve around one gallery. London, UK (2012); ArtBook Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2011); Sunny Side Up (Wandering Bears), Margate Photo Festival, Margate, UK (2011); +1000 Photo Festival, Rossiniere, Switzerland (2011); Construction, Folkstone Triennial Fringe, Folkstone. UK (2011); In the Corner Gallery, London, UK (2011); Darkness Visible, The Project Space Battersea, London, UK (2011); Print Box, Hot Shoe Gallery. London. UK (2011); Work in Progress, Royal College of Art. London, UK (2010); MAN photo prize exhibition. Gulbenkian gallery. London. UK (2010); Young British Photographers Projection Show, Photo Month, Krakow, Poland(2010). Collections include MOMA Library, New York, USA.

Jean Charles de Quillacq was born in France in 1979. He lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He completed a Diplome National d’Art Plastique (BA), at Ecole national des beaux-arts-de Lyon, in 2001 and a Diplome National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique (Master in Fine Arts), with honours, at Ecole nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon in 2003. Recent exhibitions include My hands in your sneakers, Galerie Juliètte Jongma, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2011); 56° salon d'art contemporain de Montrouge, Montrouge, France, (2011); Rowena Hughes, Eddie Peake, Jean Charles de Quillacq, Rod Barton Gallery, London, UK (2010); Open studios, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2010); La moitié des choses, exhibition in three parts, Bétonsalon, Paris, France (2010); Saint Christophe, performance in collaboration with Maxime Thieffine, Bétonsalon, Paris, France, (2010); I am not a Fortune Teller / prototype, Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, performed by Delphine Jonas and Lénio Kakléa, Aubervilliers, France, (2008); Playtime, Bétonsalon, Paris, France (2008); Peer to Peer, Collection 05, Casino Luxembourg - Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg (2008); Edition:exposition, Maison du Livre de l’Image et du Son, Villeurbanne, teamed up with the art biennale in Lyon, France (2007).