Artist: Cédric Eisenring
Exhibition title: pink/ green light
Venue: KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn, Switzerland
Date: March 6 – May 2, 2021
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn
In pink/ green light, the artist’s second solo exhibition at Kirchgasse, Cédric Eisenring’s work focuses on various forms of absence.
Working through three different media approaches, Eisenring examines the outlines of absence, responding to it and developing it while rendering its transformation visible. With its different media quality and function shifting, absence is simultaneously method, motif and atmosphere. In pink/ green light it connects a series of 15 photographs of park landscapes with a large-format print depicting an architectural structure and a story by Elizabeth Ouse commissioned by the artist.
The print shows a pavilion-like architecture constructed of white surfaces and repetitive structural forms. Prints like this constitute an ongoing part of Cédric Eisenring’s artistic practice, in which he explores the negative forms of empty spaces that are created by the punched out shapes in ready-made printing plates he sources from industrial contexts. They work their way into the paper during the printing process and emerge as haptic reliefs.
At the lower edge of the print, bodies of running teenagers are suggested. They seem to be superimposed on the empty spaces or to run out of the picture, towards an unknown place, which is continued in Ouse’s story.
Ouse’s short tale is characterized by vague allusions to the mystery genre, in which a group of five people wander through a deserted town at dusk. Using flashlights, they light up the architectural ruins of a bygone civilization. It remains unclear what they plan to do or look for until dawn.
The motif of seeking and absence further unfolds in the landscape photographs. With the lens of a large format camera, Cédric Eisenring transforms views of English palace gardens and parks into over-saturated and feverish images. Some are recognizable as reminiscences of romantic or surreal landscape paintings. The trees and bushes in the photographs are overgrown, and the earth is burnt in places. Here, the picturesque beauty that underlies such landscapes appears garish and staged. The photographs have a diffuse feeling of absence, almost as if – paradoxically – the opulence of nature and the vastness of the space lead to emptiness.
Cédric Eisenring (*1983 in Basel) lives in Zurich and Berlin.
Selected soloshows: Signal to Noise, Frieze New York and Drei, Cologne (2019); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (2018); Kirchgasse, Steckborn (2017); Schmierige Nebel, Drei, Cologne (2017); Dama, Palazzo Saluzzo di Peasana, Turino (2016); Schlupfkluft, Taylor Macklin, Zurich (2015);
Selected groupshows: After Bob Ross – Beauty is everywhere, Museum im Bellpark, Lucerne (2020); HAUS (co-curated by Cédric Eisenring), Drei, Cologne (2019); Lampen, Francesca Pia, Zurich (2018); Bloom (co-curated by Orion Martin), Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2018); Accept Baby, Forde, Geneva (2017); Utopias are more or less fascistic, Nicolas Krupp, Zurich (2017); Episode 6: Kampus der Kröten, Oslo 10, Basel (2016); Signal Failure, Pace Gallery, London (2015).
Cédric Eisenring, «pink/ green light», installation view at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, «pink/ green light», installation view at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, «pink/ green light», installation view at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 16, Inkjet Print, 46 x 53 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Gallery Kirchgasse
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 1, Inkjet Print, 46 x 53 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Gallery Kirchgasse
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 17, Inkjet Print, 46 x 53 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Gallery Kirchgasse
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 12, Inkjet Print, 46 x 53 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, Untitled, Drypoint Etching, 120 x 242 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 18, Inkjet Print, 53 x 46 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 8, Inkjet Print, 46 x 53 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring, pink/ green light 10, Inkjet Print, 53 x 46 cm, 2020 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Cédric Eisenring «pink/ green light» at Kirchgasse Gallery, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery
Elisabeth Ouse, Commissioned Text, 2021 / Photo: CE / Courtesy: the artist and Kirchgasse Gallery