Artist: Ian Kiaer
Exhibition title: Limp Oak
Venue: Lulu, Mexico City
Date: May 23 – August 2, 2015
Photography: images courtesy of the artist and Lulu
Lulu is proud to present the solo exhibition ‘Limp Oak’, by London-based artist Ian Kiaer. Incorporating the language of painting, sculpture, found-objects, and installation, Kiaer creates propositions which invite the viewer into the image and space of the work. He often draws upon and combines the reflections of specific, historical thinkers and idiosyncratic visionaries with fragile detrital materials to explore issues of scale, space and resistance through strategies of deflation, such as horizontality (supineness), incapacity and illness.
The title of this exhibition is taken from a commentary Kiaer came across on the work of the Austrian-Mexican painter Wolfgang Paalen (July 22, 1905 in Vienna, Austria – September 24, 1959 in Taxco, Mexico), in particular his participation in the surrealist exhibition of 1938 at the Galerie Beaux Arts, Paris. It speaks of the synthesis of seemingly contradictory notions that propose a critique of power by way of more weakened or compromised gestures. Paalen, who worked in Mexico and published the theoretical journal Dyn (1942-1944), was known for his unique motifs such as the horizontal totem and other more indeterminate forms developed from his method of fumage. For his exhibition at Lulu, Kiaer will create a group of works that respond to Paalen’s implied concerns with horizontality, impotence and inert attitudes to production.
Ian Kiaer (b. London, 1971) lives and works in London. A selection of solo exhibitions have been presented at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2014; Centre International d’art et du Paysage, Vassivière, 2013; Aspen Art Museum, 2012; Kunstverein Munich, 2010. He has also exhibited at the Venice Biennale (50th); Istanbul Biennale (10th); Berlin Biennale (4th); Lyon Bienniale (10th); and Manifesta 3, Ljubljana. In addition to his exhibition at Lulu, forthcoming 2015 projects include ‘The Story of the Stone’, A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam, Netherlands. He is represented by Alison Jacques Gallery, London and Marcelle Alix, Paris.
