Artists: Gerry Bibby, Rochelle Feinstein, Sophie Gogl, Lorenza Longhi, Henrik Olesen, SoiL Thornton, Sung Tieu
Exhibition title: Benefit of the Doubt
Curated with: Franziska Sophie Wildförster
Venue: Deborah Schamoni, Munich, Germany
Date: March 9 – May 29, 2021
Photography: Ulrich Gebert, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Deborah Schamoni, Munich
We are pleased to announce Benefit of the Doubt a group show taking place at Deborah Schamoni gallery in March 2021. This exhibition brings together works by artists Gerry Bibby, Rochelle Feinstein, Sophie Gogl, Lorenza Longhi, Henrik Olesen, SoiL Thornton and Sung Tieu to engage in questions around recognition proper to the aesthetic and socioeconomic dimensions of contemporary art.
The artists invited share a concern in the context, production and reception of contemporary art and the historically and institutionally limited legibility of forms, materials and mediums as they confront common registers of naming, redirecting the processes of their own signification by engaging in idiosyncratic idioms, peculiar syntax and uneasy semiotic puns.
In times of climactic polarization, politics and languages of recognition in the public sphere and in the spaces of art are revealed as double-edged swords. The exhibition focuses on works positioned in an unresolved dispute between formulating subjects and drawing attention to conditions of their very material subjection: reluctant to justify themselves as either reference or abstraction, container or content, revelation or formal withdrawal, their material and formal strategies willingly problematise the predicaments of their own valorization.
How to allow for readings that interrupt the short circuit of prevalent liberal-capitalist interpretations? In a cultural logic that favors the authority of individual experience, can the body of work operate independently of the body of the artist?
The works in Benefit of the Doubt address such questions through material critique that permeates the socioeconomic and historical circumstances of their production and reception. This exhibition wants to suggest that the untranslatable or vernacular in aesthetic experiences are not to be seen as a textual disadvantage but as a structural advantage harboring potential of transformative productivity.
Text by Franziska Sophie Wildförster
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
SoiL Thornton, Swatched Class Act, (ceramic boot licker), 2020, Wood glue, gorilla glue, epoxy and potting soil, Bondo auto body filler, shoe polish and spray paint on CNC routed MDF coated with FR polyuria, primed and sprayed white, 120 x 120 x 10 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Sung Tieu, Untitled (In Cold Print), 2020, Wall mounted stainless steel stool 47,5 x 51 x 36 cm
Sung Tieu, Untitled (In Cold Print), 2020, Floor mounted stainless steel stool, 47,5 x 51 x 36 cm
Sung Tieu, Untitled (In Cold Print), 2020, Prügelei auf Spielplatz, 2020, Print on newspaper stock, 49,5 x 31 cm
Sophie Gogl, Anna III, 2019, Acrylic on wood, 120 × 80 cm
Sophie Gogl, Anna III, 2019, Acrylic on wood, 120 × 80 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
SoiL Thornton, Isolation from fallen halt and intelligence in mirroring (remember Allen), 2019 Aluminum protective enamel paint and spray paint on wood panel, 156 x 218 x 6,5 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Gerry Bibby, Vision of Excess 11. Distortion, 2020, Wood, metal, glass, paint, paper, sound, variable dimensions, 50 x 65 x 70 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Gerry Bibby, Vision of Excess 9. Surface Hiccup, 2020, Wood, metal, glass, paint, paper, sound, variable dimensions , 64 x 85 x 85 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Gerry Bibby, Vision of Excess 8. Transit, 2020, Wood, metal, glass, paint, paper, sound, variable dimensions, 60 x 80 x 85 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Henrik Olesen, 3.Auflösung, 2020, Silicone on cardstock, 39,5 x 52 x 1 cm
Henrik Olesen, 5.Auflösung, 2020, Silicone on cardstock, 39,5 x 52 x 1 cm
Henrik Olesen, 6.-7.Auflösung, 2020, Silicone on cardstock, Part 1: 39,5 x 52 x 1 cm , Part 2: 39,5 x 52 x 1 cm , Overall dimensions: 86 x 52 x 1 cm
Henrik Olesen, Auflösung II, 2020, Silicone on cardstock 39,5 x 52 x 1 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Rochelle Feinstein, The Year In Hate /January February, 2018, Silkscreen and acrylic on canvas, 122 x 127 cm
Rochelle Feinstein, The Year In Hate /January February, 2018, Silkscreen and acrylic on canvas, 122 x 127 cm
Rochelle Feinstein, The Year In Hate /March April, 2018, Silkscreen and acrylic on canvas, 122 x 127 cm
Benefit of the Doubt, 2021, echibition view, Deborah Schamoni, Munich
Lorenza Longhi, Untitled, 2020, Silkscreen on fabric mounted on wood panel, aluminium, screws, 83 x 59 x 3 cm
Lorenza Longhi, Untitled, 2020, Silkscreen on fabric mounted on wood panel, aluminium, screws, 83 x 59 x 3 cm
SoiL Thornton, Mirroring from there to here for the most genderless rudiment (Salo’)(unformed entry), 2020, 120 stainless steel boading balls of 2″, Dimensions variable
SoiL Thornton, Mirroring from there to here for the most genderless rudiment (Salo’)(unformed entry), 2020, 120 stainless steel boading balls of 2″, Dimensions variable
