• a changing ratio

    Rosemarie Castoro and Liz Deschenes

        

    Photo: Dirk Tacke
  • The central characteristics of Castoro’s and Deschenes’s oeuvres include formal and substantive examination of particular mediums, and a reliance on...

    The central characteristics of Castoro’s and Deschenes’s oeuvres include formal and substantive examination of particular mediums, and a reliance on temporal processes, that participate in the tradition of Minimal art, but also illustrate a liberated view of materiality. The exhibition a changing ratio showcases how the practices of both artists, from their beginnings in the field of monochrome painting, opened up into experimental, cross-media, process-based approaches, then into space, and towards an intellectual reflection involving the body.

    This Viewing Room is an extension of the exhibition into digital space and offers insight into the multi-layered oeuvre of Liz Deschenes and Rosemarie Castoro beyond the exhibited works.

    The exhibition is a collaboration with Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac London • Paris • Salzburg and supported by Miguel Abreu Gallery New York.
     
     
    Installation views | a changing ratio | Photo: Dirk Tacke

  • Liz Deschenes

    Photo: Dirk Tacke
  • Liz Deschenes

    Liz Deschenes

    Liz Deschenes (*1966) was born in Boston and lives and works in New York. She attended the Rhode Island School of Art and Design, where she initially enrolled in painting, eventually switching to photography and graduating in 1988. In her artistic work, Deschenes confronts the assumptions surrounding photography as a fixed image and extends this traditional view by experimenting with the medium’s properties and possibilities. Her unique photograms are camera-less, long-term exposures on light-sensitive paper. Deschenes also creates sculptural and architectural objects that incorporate both their surroundings and the viewer through reflections.

     

    In Liz Deschenes' work, the profound examination of the history of photography is omnipresent. Her works are related in content to Louis Daguerre, William Henry Fox Talbot and formally to the concept photography of the 1960s, which opened up self-reflexivity for photography. The critical examination of the history of the medium and the resulting new approach have made Liz Deschenes a pioneer in the field of contemporary photography.


    Liz Deschenes | Photo: Stephen Faught, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York

  • 'Depending on the day, the weather, the architecture, and the presence or absence of others in the gallery, each encounter...

    "Depending on the day, the weather, the architecture, and the presence or absence of others in the gallery, each encounter with Deschenes' work is a unique experience that speaks to our fundamental desire to be transformed by art."

     

    – Eva Respini, chief curator, Institute of Contemporary Art ICA, Boston

     

     

    Exhibition views "Liz Deschenes", Institute of Contemporary Art ICA, Boston (2016) | Photo: Charles Mayer

  • Liz Deschenes, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016 Liz Deschenes, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016 Liz Deschenes, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016

    Liz Deschenes

    Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016

    Prototype for Gallery 7 (3) is a large-format photogram mounted onto a free-standing frame on an aluminum plate, thus functioning simultaneously as a photographic and sculptural object. Liz Deschenes explores the material potential of photography using the elementary aspects of the medium: photographic paper, light and chemicals. Deschenes' time-intensive work process begins by exposing light sensitive paper to the ambient light of the night, then washing and fixing it with silver toner. The resulting photograms bear fine, abstract traces of their creation process and, through their reflective surface, involve both the viewer encountering them and the spatial context of their presentation. As the material tends to oxidize, the works slowly develop further over time. The exhibition space thus becomes a camera, which, depending on the incidence of light, determine the alteration of the surface. In this way, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3) absorbs light and makes the material development of photography perceptible, while at the same time the object – like Stereograph #35, FPF #1 and FPF #5 – reacts to its surroundings by reflecting movement in time and space.


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

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  • Free-standing photograms of this series were part of the exhibition Gallery 7 (2015) at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which showed the processual transformation of photograms exposed to light in various ways over the course of a year. Further parts of the series were also shown in a comprehensive solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2016.


    Video "Liz Deschenes | Gallery 7", Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (2015)

  • Liz Deschenes, Stereograph #35, 2019

    Liz Deschenes

    Stereograph #35, 2019

    The slim and tall wall sculpture Stereograph #35 is composed of two long-term exposed photograms, connected at a right angle and thus partially tangent to the wall. Liz Deschenes uses light-sensitive paper for the Stereographs work series, which she began in 2003, to create camera less, self-referential works. She describes her approach as stereographic - a term originally coined in the 1850s for two nearly identical prints that, paired and viewed through a stereoscope, create a 3-D illusion of a single image. Deschenes uses this technique of doubling and splitting to give the recipient the opportunity to actively participate in her work: "My artworks should challenge active engagement. The viewers are an integral part of the artwork in which they participate. They are not given a representation of something past, but a physical object in which they participate in the present." The artist understands Stereograph #35 less as a classical image, but rather as an experience bound to space and time. As in the works FPF #1, (2018) and FPF#5 (2018), the viewers activate the work through their movement and presence in the space and thus temporarily also become part of the presentation.

     

    Liz Deschenes showed the first works of the Stereographs series on the occasion of her exhibition at the Vienna Secession 2012 and has been developing them continuously since.

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  • Liz Deschenes, FPS(60) (2018), Pinault Collection. Installation view Luogo e Segni, Punta della Dogana, Venedig (2019) © Palazzo Grassi | Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani e Marco Cappelletti

  • "I’m changing, the work is changing, the space is changing, the viewer is changing. We are all changing in relationship to each other. That is the goal."

     

    – Liz Deschenes

     

     

    Video "Liz Deschenes on her camera-less photography", San Francisco MoMA (2018)

  • The title FPF #1 and FPF #5 (both 2018), of the two-part photograms from the series with the same name,...

    The title FPF #1 and FPF #5 (both 2018), of the two-part photograms from the series with the same name, refer to the abbreviation for "frame per foot" and thus to the process of creating the work. Each photogram of the series was exposed for as long as a human foot touched the ground for a single step, the duration varying according to the gait and speed of the walker. Deschenes refers to the measure for image rates "frames per second", which describes the number of individual images of a camera that are taken per time frame. The artist uses analog photographic techniques to examine and visualize time as a physical unit. FPF #1 and FPF #5 are records of the material conditions of their creation. The structure of the surface changes depending on the brightness during the exposure of the photosensitive paper and the intensity of the chemical development. The immediate reality of the photographic process takes the place of a mediating reality - in the form of a motif. The horizontally staggered works have a monochrome mirror-like effect, which, upon closer inspection, reveal a highly individual, sensitive surface: “It changes, it oxidizes, it catches handprints if handled. It is a sensitive, vulnerable material.” Photography is no longer just a momentary snapshot, it is constantly absorbing the influences of its surroundings. Similar to Stereograph #35, FPF #1 and FPF #5 should not be seen as classic pictures, but as experiences that are bound to space and time.


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

  • In Liz Deschene's work, the profound examination of the history of photography is omnipresent. The works from the FPF series...

    In Liz Deschene's work, the profound examination of the history of photography is omnipresent. The works from the FPF series relate to Étienne-Jules Marey, a pioneer in the development of the moving image. In the 1880s, Marey built the first chronophotograph, which initially made it possible to capture up to ten phases of movement on a single light-sensitive surface. The analysis of physiological phenomena such as the human gait were in focus. Following the recording by the photographic apparatus, Marey translated the results into curves, diagrams and graphs that look like abstract graphics. Deschene's series FPF is a transformation of these scientific-looking recordings and are a further investigation of time in space using photographic methods. Both Marey and Deschenes are united by their interest in a reduced representation of movement and time. The hanging of Deschene's mainly two-part works is reminiscent of step sequences on the one hand and is a direct reference to Marey's studies on the other.

    Marey used photography as a technique of capturing human movements in phases, thus laying the foundation for cinematography, which also finds an intensive involvement in Deschene's work.

     

    Photo: Invitation card | Liz Deschenes, Rates (Frames per Second), 2018 at Miguel Abreu, New York

    • Liz Deschenes, FPF #1, 2018
      Liz Deschenes, FPF #1, 2018
    • Liz Deschenes, FPF #5, 2018
      Liz Deschenes, FPF #5, 2018
  • In 2019, parallel to the 58th Venice Biennale, Deschenes’s works were part of the exhibition ‘Luogo e segni’ at the...

    In 2019, parallel to the 58th Venice Biennale, Deschenes’s works were part of the exhibition ‘Luogo e segni’ at the Pinault Collection – Punta della Dogana. Major solo exhibitions have been presented at the ICA, Boston (2016); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2015); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2015); and Secession, Vienna (2012). Deschenes has been included in group exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2016); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2013); and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2012).

    Her works are part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as well as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, the Centre Pompidou and the Pinault Collection in Paris.

    → to the artist page

     

    Exhibition views "Liz Deschenes", Institute of Contemporary Art ICA, Boston (2016) | Photo: Charles Mayer

  • Video "Liz Deschenes", Institute of Contemporary Art ICA, Boston (2016)

  • Rosemarie Castoro

    Photo: Dirk Tacke
  • Rosemarie Castoro

    Rosemarie Castoro

    1939 - 2015

    Rosemarie Castoro was born in Brooklyn and worked her entire life in New York, where she was a central figure in the city’s Minimalist and Conceptualist art scene. After studying at the Pratt Institute, she experimented with various forms of expression and media, moving from drawing, painting and installations to choreography and modern dance. In 1969, Castoro turned away from painting and began focusing on new experimental forms of expression from the New York avant-garde: conceptual text pieces, concrete poetry and performative interventions in the streets. Her formalistic approach is often based on the premise of allegorical ambiguity. Recent major museum retrospectives have taken place at MAMCO, Musée d’art modern et contemporain, Geneva (2019) and MACBA, Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (2017). Castoro’s works were included in two of Lucy Lippard’s legendary “Numbers” shows, "555,087" at the Seattle Art Museum (1969) and "995,000" at Vancouver Art Gallery (1970).


    Rosemarie Castoro, Studio performance in Beaver's Trap (detail) (1977). Vintage b&w self-timer Polaroid photograph. © The Estate of Rosemarie Castoro. Courtesy of Anke Kempkes Art Advisory | Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, London • Paris • Salzburg

  • Rosemarie Castoro, Two Blues Band, 1965

    Rosemarie Castoro

    Two Blues Band, 1965

    Rosemarie Castoro's drawing Two Blues Band (1965) is one of her minimalist Interference paintings and drawings, created in the mid-sixties and in which she establishes a relationship between repetitive geometric forms, color, and her choreographic training and activities. After her studies at the Pratt Institute in New York, Castoro began experimenting with various forms of expression and media - from drawing, painting and installations to choreography and modern dance. The rectangular blue forms in Two Blues Band combine her various interests and can be interpreted as dance steps that spread out in a regular rhythm from left to right across the sheet. There are similarities to dance pieces by Castoro and Yvonne Rainer - who is considered the founder of postmodern dance - in which rectangular bars were used as props and moved on stage. The title Two Blues Band is to be understood literally as well as descriptively and thus stands in the tradition of minimalism, which was also called "literalism" by the art historian and art critic Michael Fried.


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

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  • “Castoro’s career exists in a lacuna at the very heart of canonized contemporary art history, within the New York art...

    “Castoro’s career exists in a lacuna at the very heart of canonized contemporary art history, within the New York art scene of the sixties and seventies. She was a key participant, and while scholarship and institutional recognition has been severely lacking, at the time there were curators who paid attention and included her work in important art exhibitions and events, and her regular gallery shows garnered frequent reviews in art journals and press.”

     

    – Tanya Barson, chief curator MACBA, Barcelona (2017)

     

     

    Photo: Dirk Tacke

  • Rosemarie Castoro, Orange China Marker, 1967 Rosemarie Castoro, Orange China Marker, 1967

    Rosemarie Castoro

    Orange China Marker, 1967

    The large-format painting Orange China Marker (1967) is the final work in a series of abstract paintings by Rosemarie Castoro, which became increasingly monochrome over the course of the sixties and in which the structure of the paint application as well as the use of the line becomes increasingly distinctive. These paintings, often referred to as Prismacolor Paintings or Pencil Paintings, are characterized by the dense repetition of parallel lines with their pervasive monochrome surfaces. In Orange China Marker, the orange color is applied diagonally from the lower left corner to the upper right corner. Drawings with prismatic colored pencils, wax crayons (China Marker) and pencil overlay the brushstrokes and lead to a shimmering moiré effect.

    Castoro's use of the pencil line as a visible part of the painting is reminiscent of the work of minimalist painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), whom she was associated with during that time. The canvas bears witness to Castoro's expanded understanding of painting and drawing, in which genre boundaries are blurred and the traditional concept of media is rewritten.

    As in the work Two Blues Band (1965), the title Orange China Marker is to be understood literally in the sense of Minimal Art and refers to the colorfulness and technique of painting.


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

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  • Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969

    Rosemarie Castoro

    Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969

    Untitled (Concrete Poetry) (April 6, 1969) can be interpreted as an enumeration of a to-do list, which Castoro had planned for April 6, 1969 (the sheet was dated in pencil). The terms, which have been inserted letter by letter into the grid structure of the sheet with a felt pen, can be read almost like invitations: "wash, squeeze dry, swaddle, filter, flow, penetrate ..." and are ambiguously chosen, so that the reader and viewer cannot quite get a clear idea of the respective actions.

     

    Photo: Dirk Tacke

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  • Installation view "Rosemarie Castoro. Enfocar a l’infinit" (09/11/2017-15/04/2018), Collecció MACBA. Centre d’Estudis i Documentació. Fons Històric MACBA, © The Estate of Rosemarie Castoro © Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) | Photo: Roberto Ruiz

  • “During the late 1960s, Rosemarie Castoro shifted from making paintings using graphic tools such as prismacolor markers, so making works on canvas from pens essentially, to making concrete poems from these same marker pens.”

     

    – Tanya Barson, chief curator MACBA, Barcelona (2017)

     

     

    Video "Rosemarie Castoro. Enforcar a l'infinit", MACBA, Barcelona (2017)

  • In the series Concrete Poetries (1968-69), Rosemarie Castoro experiments with text, language, writing and the written image as well as...

    In the series Concrete Poetries (1968-69), Rosemarie Castoro experiments with text, language, writing and the written image as well as with the temporal extension of actions and language by documenting her activities in the form of a diary and reciting these poems aloud and recording them.

    These works are among the artist’s most conceptual works and show how the topic of time, as well as the reflection on time itself, occupy a major focus in her Oeuvre and how she succeeded in capturing these abstract elements in a pictorial way.

    Comparable to the Inventory Drawings, created at the same time, Castoro developed a quasi-scientific system in the diary-like poems, with which she structures and records her daily activities in an almost exaggerated way.
    Castoro shared the practice of Concrete Poetry with her former partner and sculptor Carl Andre, who typed stacked letters and words into his minimalist poems with a typewriter and arranged them within the space of a sheet of paper. Andre focuses on the formal image of language and the visual representation of its structure, whereas Castoro - who was also known to recited her works aloud - designed her acoustic poetry according to tonal and subjective rules.

     


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

     

  • Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969

    Rosemarie Castoro

    Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969

    The work Untitled (Concrete Poetry) (May 28 / 29, 1969) can also similarly be read as a call to action, which Castoro apparently set for herself as the task of the day: "Go out, seek a reflection, find someone to discuss". The sheet is divided into a documentation of two days (May 28 and 29, 1969) and has a narrative, recording character, as the fourth section refers back to the first and summarizes what has happened and has been experienced in the meantime: "I will tell you when I return [...] in the morning, I did return from ...".


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

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  • Rosemarie Castoro's conceptual inventory drawings (1968-69) are based on the artist's everyday perceptions, which she structures utlizing herown personal numeric...

    Rosemarie Castoro's conceptual inventory drawings (1968-69) are based on the artist's everyday perceptions, which she structures utlizing herown personal numeric system. In Controlled Arbitrary Statements (1968), the visual reality, or inventories, of the artist's surroundings are arranged in a number system of 1-5. Space, distance, surroundings and their relationships to one another are seemingly rationally defined by measurements. The contradiction in the title exposes the supposed systematization and rationality with subtle humor. In the inventory drawings, Castoro explores the interplay between logic and irrationality and the distance between subjectively perceived and actual reality.

    As in her Pencil Paintings and Interference Drawings, the formal appearance of the line remains central, which is also the focus of the drawing Oct 25 1968 / Jan 24 1969 (1968-69). This refers to Castoro's almost obsessive attention to time in a reference system of diagonal lines and dates, which - as in Controlled Arbitrary Statements - cannot be interpreted by the viewer without knowledge of the system.

    In contrast to Pencil Paintings, in which materiality and spatial effect play a central role alongside the line, the drawings point to Castoro's increasing turn towards Conceptual Art from 1968 onwards and have a recording character.


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

    • Rosemarie Castoro, Controlled Arbitrary Statements, 1968
      Rosemarie Castoro, Controlled Arbitrary Statements, 1968
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Oct 25 1968 / Jan 24 1969, 1968-69
      Rosemarie Castoro, Oct 25 1968 / Jan 24 1969, 1968-69
  • The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from... The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from... The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from... The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from... The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from...

    The abstract forms of the tall, expansive steel sculptures Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B (both 1979) derive from the modelling qualities of paper. According to a personal story, Castoro's mother had put a few $20 bills into a Coca-Cola bottle and sent it to her. Rosemarie Castoro then continuously crumpled the initially flat $20 notes and placed them upright on their narrow edges, playfully exploring the sculptural characteristics of the bills.

    The two Black Flashers are made of thin steel and painted with matt black acrylic paint. With these works, Castoro draws a link to her choreographic and body-related works from the mid-1960s, confirming her ongoing interest in the physical exploration of space and the relationship between bodies and geometry. In a post-minimalist manner, the geometric form (here the basic rectangular shape of the steel leaves) is used as a starting point and expanded by a sensual component by squeezing the steel and painting its surface. At the same time, it is supplemented with the personal and autobiographical element of the narrative about the process of creation; further sexualized by the title Flasher. The title refers to this physical quality of the sculptures and implies an inconspicuous physical exposure. This is a known characteristic of Postminimal artists: investigating abstraction in the form as a further development of Minimal Art, also in regard to the subjective and eroticized body and the individual psyche.

    The works were exhibited several times after 1979: in public spaces such as on sidewalks and squares in New York and Paris. The encounter with the viewer and the juxtaposition of physicality is an elementary part of the work. The works Black Flasher A and Black Flasher B were prominently featured in the two exhibitions at MACBA (2017) and MAMCO (2019).


    Photo: Dirk Tacke

  • "All of Rosemarie Castoro’s art is about a fine bond between mind and body – gestural, but above all disciplined. Its major impetus is kinaesthetic."

     

    – Lucy Lippard, Artforum (1975)

     

     

    Video "Rosemarie Castoro | Wherein lies the space", Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London • Paris • Salzburg (2019)

  • Rosemarie Castoro was a key figure in the New York art scene of the sixties and seventies. Her loft-studio in...

    Rosemarie Castoro was a key figure in the New York art scene of the sixties and seventies. Her loft-studio in Soho, where she worked from 1963 until the end of her life, was a gathering point for the Art Workers' Coalition and the protagonists of the closely connected scene of that time, such as Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson.

     

    Although Castoro was – wrongly - lacking scientific and institutional recognition prior to her two posthumous exhibitions at MACBA (2017) and MAMCO (2019), curators, such as Lucy Lippard and E.C. Goossen, as well as gallery owners such as Tibor de Nagy, Virginia Dwan, and Paula Cooper - paid great attention to her work and provided platforms to present her works. In 1966, for example, she took part in the exhibition "Distillation" curated by E.C. Goossen, which became groundbreaking for the subsequent definition of Minimal Art. Her works were also shown in several of Lucy Lippard's legendary Numbers Shows, such as "Number 7" at the Paula Cooper Gallery (1969), "555,087" at the Seattle Art Museum (1969), and "995,000" at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1970). Castoro was also one of three artists, along with Christine Kozlov and Adrian Piper, represented in Ursula Meyer's Anthology of Conceptual Art (1972) and was also included in Lippard's Anthology of Conceptual Art (1972).

    → to the artist page

     

    Rosemarie Castoro in front of a "Free Standing Wall" in her studio, Spring Street, New York (c. 1970) © The Estate of Rosemarie Castoro. Courtesy of Anke Kempkes Art Advisory | Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, London • Paris • Salzburg

  • Video "Rosemarie Castoro | Time = space between appointment and meeting" , MAMCO, Geneva (2019)

  • Artworks of the exhibition

    • Rosemarie Castoro, Black Flasher A, 1979
      Rosemarie Castoro, Black Flasher A, 1979
    • Liz Deschenes, FPF #1, 2018
      Liz Deschenes, FPF #1, 2018
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969
      Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969
    • Liz Deschenes, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016
      Liz Deschenes, Prototype for Gallery 7 (3), 2016
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Black Flasher B, 1979
      Rosemarie Castoro, Black Flasher B, 1979
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Controlled Arbitrary Statements, 1968
      Rosemarie Castoro, Controlled Arbitrary Statements, 1968
    • Liz Deschenes, Stereograph #35, 2019
      Liz Deschenes, Stereograph #35, 2019
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Two Blues Band, 1965
      Rosemarie Castoro, Two Blues Band, 1965
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Oct 25 1968 / Jan 24 1969, 1968-69
      Rosemarie Castoro, Oct 25 1968 / Jan 24 1969, 1968-69
    • Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969
      Rosemarie Castoro, Untitled (Concrete Poetry), 1969
    • Liz Deschenes, FPF #5, 2018
      Liz Deschenes, FPF #5, 2018