 | Viktor Kopp, A or B (4), 2014. Oil on canvas, 78 x 52 inches. Photo: Andres Ramirez. | | | | This is a joint exhibition of Ribordy Contemporary and Blondeau & Cie.
Blondeau & Cie and Ribordy Contemporary are pleased to announce Viktor Kopp's second solo exhibition in Geneva. Paintings will be presented in both galleries to form a single exhibition.
For several years Viktor Kopp´s paintings focused on motif, illusion, perspective and geometric abstraction, the viewer being confronted with works that often oscillated between abstraction and representation. Over time vivid colors yielded to an intentionally neutral monochrome palette—greys and whites ("Corner" paintings, 2011–present) or browns ("Chocolate" paintings, 2007–12). At the same time, the surrealist and comical landscapes which mixed architectural elements and isolated body parts began to be replaced by paintings in which figure and background merged together.
For this joint exhibition, the artist presents his latest body of work: "Corner" paintings and "A or B" paintings.
The "A or B" paintings push the image in a new direction—from a personal or internal space towards the public realm. Viktor Kopp relates these paintings more than before to art, as opposed to personal matters. Instead of letters forming his initials (KV, 2011) they are now the more anonymous A and B, suggesting a more open reading of their meaning. Plan A–plan B, example A–example B.
The relationship between figure and background remains, however the letters are now either painted flat on the surface of the canvas or even unpainted; the result being less illusionistic than before. There is a sense of removal and irony, the viewer looking at a painting depicting paintings or examples of paintings. The brushstrokes and painterly traces of the backgrounds, being in some sense arbitrary, literally seem to hang on the firmness of the letters, both in terms of form and of language, attempting to define and categorize something that eludes absolute definition and specific categories. The painterly background gradually invades the space of the letters and obscures them. Borders are crossed, rules are broken, what we see as firm and reliable gets dissolved. Viktor Kopp's floating letters have an analytic quality and contribute to a rational logic within painted abstraction.
Exhibition:
September 18–December 20 at Blondeau & Cie
September 18–November 1 at Ribordy Contemporary, Boulevard d'Yvoy 7b, 1205 Geneva
Opening: September 18, 6–9pm in both galleries
Viktor Kopp (b. 1971, Stockholm) completed studies in fine art in Malmö, Gothenberg and Helsinki. Previous solo exhibitions include Passagen Linköpings Konsthall, Linköping (2013); Bureau, New York, (2012, 2010); Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva (2012); and Galleri Magnus Åklundh, Malmö (2011). He participated in several group exhibitions at Galleri Riis, Stockholm (2014), Malmö Art Academy, (2012), Ribordy Contemporary (2011), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010) and Bureau, New York (2010). He teaches painting at the Malmö Art Academy and lives and works in Stockholm. In 2013, the artist received the International Artists Studio Program Studio Grant, ISCP, New York.
Viktor Kopp is represented by Bureau, New York and Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva.
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