Terminus
Vika Prokopaviciute, Max Ruf, Kolja Kärtner Sainz, Maria VMier
13 July – 25 August, 2023
Exhibition
Terminus
Vika Prokopaviciute
Max Ruf
Kolja Kärtner Sainz
Maria VMier
July 13 - August 25, 2023
Opening Thursday, July 13, 6-8pm
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present Terminus, a group exhibition featuring works by Vika Prokopaviciute, Max Ruf, Kolja Kärtner Sainz, and Maria VMier.
An array of objects, symbols, and marks are employed to delineate our observance of space and time. Most notably are those that mark the ends, heeded to varying degrees of militancy depending on the area's dictum. Though these limits appear rigid, we eagerly traverse diverse landmasses, extend our own peripersonal space, and have our somatic perimeters breached through microbial mingling.
These Edges, at times materially unyielding even within the parameters of artistic mediums, attest not to a barrier, but a transitory place of passage. Terminus is a final point or limit, yet the term shares the same root word of the Sanskrit tarati, meaning to pass or cross over - a vector within a seemingly closed framework. Each of the featured artist maintains a practice which breaches the materiality of the work, with an emphasis on the entangled and interactive relationship between ontology and space
Vika Prokopaviciute abstracted pictorial planes and structures are often the result of systems which are modified over the course of the painting process. Rules are engaged and adjusted, with the emergent forms often echoing spatial peculiarities or adjacent works. Dominating in scale and mechanically iridescent, each iteration mirrors, repeats, or multiplies like auto-biographical fractals, signaling a locale beyond the canvas.
Max Ruf’s painting practice features a diverse set of processes and attitudes - a pictorial language which ranges from, the analytic precision of geometric abstraction to gestural improvisation, from a muted industrial palette to wild eruptions of vibrant color, to compositional models suspended between the illustrational diagram and marks informed by the material properties of paint itself. By maintaining a space to think, feel and ‘image’, the co-presence of these varying pictorial languages, Ruf accentuates painting as a zone of potential, plasticity and playfulness to both develop tools and to reflect upon our contemporary image landscape, hierarchies, and order.
Kolja Kärtner Sainz’ work exists between pure representation and abstraction, capturing instead the haziness of transitions or changes in perception. Working synchronously across multiple canvases and primarily using diluted oil and ink on canvas, neutral shades weave and collapse into each other, pierced with shards of red, blue, and greens. Visually tempestuous, the lines and compositions appear to render the conflicting dualities of form and energy.
Maria VMier’s large scale Companion series feature ink and pigment marks on paper. The rhizomatic lineworks expand, contract, and reach toward the edges of the sheets resulting in a bold yet aqueous image. The fluidity of the brushwork moves away from the rigidity of charting and recalls more the softer processes of calligraphy and choreography, creating a space where time and bodies come together.