Alessandro Moroder and Asger Dybvad Larsen at Rolando Anselmi

Artists: Alessandro Moroder and Asger Dybvad Larsen

Exhibition title: h E ll / A breed of borders

Venue: Rolando Anselmi, Berlin, Germany

Date: September 29 – December 1, 2018

Photography: Riccardo Malberti / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Rolando Anselmi, Berlin/Rome

h E ll

Rolando Anselmi is pleased to present h E ll, Alessandro Moroder’s first solo show in the gallery space of Berlin. In h E ll Moroder investigates notions of genealogy and nature by completing a pilgrimage to his father’s native Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy, creating—and confronting—a new discourse of endurance and memory through personal history, physicality, and medium. In this new body of paintings, installation, and photography, the artist examines a performative mark-making process by operating as a non-figurative representation of the body, material arrangement, and motion. In the diptych Dirt Painting #24 / #25 (Perseus with the Head of Medusa) the artist use sheets of cotton acting as summations of labor as the once pristine pieces of fabrics are buried in the immediate surroundings of dirt to create a site-specific index of his journey. The excess debris and enamel paint is then striped away to discover a new vernacular of subtraction, each impression cataloging the process in a study of nature, endurance, and chance. Mimicking Antonio Canova’s marble sculpture Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Moroder’s paintings examine the similarities in the two materials (marble and cloth) and their respective function as a recording of a culminated journey, Perseus’ triumph over Medusa, and Moroder’s recapitulation of a personal history through medium. Untitled is an installation consisting of three sheets of cotton with traces of dirt and enamel paint presented as a wall relief, each nailed by a singular point in relation to a background wall drawing referencing death metal imaginary. The photograph h E ll depicts a typical late summer afternoon in the Dolomites in which heavy clouds and fog create a symbiosis of light grays. The photograph is presented upside down, wherein the word “HELL” appears in the top left corner, a camera trick one typically learns during elementary school by manually changing the current date to create this code. Moroder portrays the same mountain range in a different season three years later in the photograph Snow. This ethereal work depicts a close up of the snow covering a similar field, uninterrupted by man or nature. With no focal point to examine the information, this serene and quiet setting challenges the viewer’s eye.

Alessandro Moroder (b. 1989) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Recent solo shows include: Site-Specific Installation (Ortisei, 2018), FIFI Projects (San Pedro, 2018, 2016), ASHES/ASHES (New York, 2017), Galleria Acappella (Naples, 2015), HVW8 (Los Angeles, 2013), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, 2011). Recent group shows include: FIFI Projects (Mexico City, 2018, 2017, 2016; San Pedro, 2017, 2016, 2015), Code (Copenhagen, 2018), Huset For Kunst Og Design (Holstebro, 2017), Marie Kirkegaard Gallery (Copenhagen, 2017), Palazzo Fruscione (Salerno, 2016), Rolando Anselmi (Rome, 2016), HVW8 (Los Angeles, 2016, 2013), Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, 2015), Galerie Derouillon (Paris, 2015), Galleria Patricia Armocida (Milan, 2013).

A breed of borders

Galerie Rolando Anselmi is pleased to present A breed of borders, the third solo exhibition by Danish artist Asger Dybvad Larsen in its gallery space. As the title suggests, Larsen’s new body of works focuses on the concept of border : through a rhythmical display of almost identical canvases, the artist investigates this category, building up a site specific environment which surrounds the viewer. A border is the mark of the difference defining the relation between two things by excluding one from the other. Nonetheless it is by the presence of a margin that something states its presence. In this sense a border can be assumed as the limit of an actual element: Aristotle considered “the limit as the extreme point in which a thing necessarily touches the other of itself”. In a match between entirety and peculiarity, each canvas embodies those relations and at the same time questions its presence as part of a breed. The nine works are characterised by the use of repeated geometric shapes made out of slices of canvases dunked into the color and progressively sewed to the others. Form, composition, structure and materiality are the immediate physical factors that define the reading of those works in an ongoing dialogue within the tradition of painting. In his practice, Asger Dybvad Larsen underlines the medium of painting and its ability to create a further stage of reality, a gate to the aesthetic experience.

Asger Dybvad Larsen (b. 1990) lives and works in Aarhus, Denmark. Recent solo shows include: Gether Contemporary (Copenhagen, 2018), Spazio KN (Trento, 2017), Geukens & De Vil Gallery (Knokke, 2017), False Front (Portland, 2017), Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome, 2017; Berlin, 2015), Pablo’s Birthday Gallery (New York, 2016; 2015), LARMgalleri (Copenhagen, 2015), Lunchmoney Gallery (Aarhus, 2013). Recent group shows include: Centre of Contemporary Art (Maiorca, 2018), Geukens & De Vil Gallery (Knokke, 2018), Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon (Videbæk, 2018), Pablo’s Birthday Gallery (New York, 2018), L21 (Mallorca, 2017), Huset for Kunst og Design (Holstebro, 2017), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, 2017), Galerie l’inlassable (Paris, 2017), Hunted Projects (Edinburgh, 2017), Nordic Contemporary (Paris, 2016), Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome, 2016), Arróniz (Mexico City, 2016), Ex Fabbrica Orobia 15 (Milano, 2016), Galeria da Boavista (Lisbon, 2016), Rod Barton (London, 2015), Huset for Kunst og Design (Holstebro, 2015), Sixty Eight (Copenhagen, 2015), LARMgalleri (Copenhagen, 2015), Biennale of Sæby (Sæby, 2014; 2012), Munkeruphus (Gilleleje, 2014), Artspace (Aarhus, 2014), Artspace (Kibk, 2013). In 2017 he received 15th June Foundation’s Art Prize and in 2018 he has been awarded with a grant from the Lepsien Art Foundation in Düsseldorf. In 2017 Roulette Rousse published the first artist’s monograph curated by Marie Nipper & Victoria Marie Christensen.

Alessandro Moroder, 2018, exhibition view, Rolando Anselmi, Berlin

Asger Dybvad Larsen, 2018, exhibition view, Rolando Anselmi, Berlin