Trust Your Brush at Towards

Artists: Anne Neukamp, Beth Letain, Manuel Kirsch, Marlene Zoë Burz, Renaud Regnery

Exhibition title: Trust Your Brush

Co-organized by: Anne Neukmap

Venue: Towards, Toronto, Canada

Date: October 7 – 27, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Towards, Toronto

Towards is pleased to present Trust Your Brush, a group exhibition featuring the work of Anne Neukamp, Beth Letain, Manuel Kirsch, Marlene Zoë Burz and Renaud Regnery.

The artists included in Trust Your Brush share an interest in analyzing existing structures, and the ways in which they can be disassembled. Using the grid as a point of departure, the work within the exhibition explores themes of repetition, technology, scarcity, and the human body.

The first piece the viewer is confronted with upon entering the gallery is Marlene Zoë Burz’s Sketch (Wall Toronto), 2018, a large scale gouache drawing on mylar. Referencing both architecture, as well as the human body, the piece wraps around corners and takes on an almost skeletal-like support of the space.

Renaud Regnery’s Faux Title Paintings explore human desire and the economic and tech-nological developments that led to the mass production of consumer goods. Created using wallpaper from the 1930’s, the patterns were originally meant to provide an attractive and cost-effective way for individuals to decorate their home during a worldwide economic crisis. Re-purposed here, the grids appear slightly misaligned – the slippages in between the “tiles” highlight the tension between surface, meaning, and material.

Anne Neukamp diverts the vocabulary of the visual communications we live by: signs, logotypes or pictograms, by rendering them fundamentally ambiguous. Images and iconography are culled from a variety of sources, removed from their context, and then re-purposed to create something wholly new. Oscillating back and forth between the familiar and the foreign, as well as the digital and the physical – space gets flattened within her work, and the images and objects within these compositions fluctuate in an endless loop where meaning is continually reinventing itself.

Manuel Kirsch’s large scale canvases explore the aesthetics of everyday objects. Using strategies of sampling, repetition, scale, and materiality, he examines the seemingly mun-dane patterns found on some of the most common household goods and expands them– turning them from something quite common-place to something altogether extraordinary.

In the back space, there are three watercolour drawings by Beth Letain. Known primarily for her large scale, abstract paintings, these smaller studies share a spatial awareness and interplay between surface and edge, as well as an acute understanding of colour and form.

Anne Neukamp (b. 1976, Düsseldorf, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She has had over twenty one-person and participated in over sixty group exhibits worldwide, including: Rosenwald-Wolf-Gallery – University of the Arts, Philadelphia (US); Marlborough Contemporary, New York (US); Greta Meert, Brussels (BE); Lisa Cooley, New York (US); Jr Projects, Toronto (CA); Gregor Podnar, Berlin; Kunstverein Oldenburg (DE); Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (DE); KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE); Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (US); and Galerie des Galeries, Galerie Lafayettes, Paris (FR). She is the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant and she resided in this context at the ISCP (International Curatorial and Studio Program) in New York (US). She was nominated for the Jean-François Prat prize in 2016, Paris (FR).

Beth Letain (b. 1976, Canada) lives and works in Berlin. Letain earned a BA from McGill University, Montreal, in 1999; a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, in 2005; and an MFA in painting from SUNY Purchase, New York, in 2008. Solo exhibitions of her work include Signal Hill, Pace Gallery, London (2018); The Company She Keeps,

Peres Projects, Berlin (2017); Heavyweight, L’escalier, Montreal (2017); Air Horn, Open Forum, Berlin (2017); Beth Letain, Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn (2010); and Nothing’s Notation, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax (2005). Awards and residencies include a full fellowship supported by the Dedalus Foundation from the Vermont Studio Center in 2009; a Visual Art Project Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2010; and a Triangle Arts Residency, Brooklyn, in 2013.

Manuel Kirsch (b. 1986, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam (DE). Recent group exhibitions include Specifc Site, Gallery Klemms, Berlin (2018); Böse Bluten, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Late breakfast, Bregenz, Austria (2017); das ernste Zelt, Humboldt (2016); gentro di gravita permanente, Centercourt gallery, Munchen (2016). With Marlene Zoë Burz he is the organizer of SOX, an exhibition space in Berlin.

Marlene Zoë Burz (b. 1990, Stuttgart, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include in futura mergere, Reflector Gallery, Bern, CH (2018); Böse Blüten, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Late breakfast, Humboldt Carré, Berlin, (2017); Unbekannter Turnus, Cabaneb Bern, CH (2016); Walllust (Aura an Aura aus), Kunsthalle am Hamburgerplatz, Berlin. (2016); new wallwork and last drink, Köpenickerstraße 36, Berlin (2015); Kopier mir die Sonne, Academic Art Museum, Bonn, (2014); Zum Bleistift: Zeichnung Gallery Inga Kondeyne, Berlin, (2014); Transport, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee (2013). With Manuel Kirsch she is the organizer of of SOX, an exhibition space in Berlin.

Renaud Regnery (b. 1976, Epinal, France) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Klemm’s, Berlin (DE); Ricou Gallery, Brüssel, (BE); Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, (US). Recent group exhibitions include Renaud Regnery, Kunstverein Oldenburg, Oldenburg, DE (2018); 14th Biennale de Lyon, FR (2017); Experimental Berlin, Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York, US (2017); Tatem und Tobu, KLEMM’S, Berlin, DE (2016); Anne Neukamp, Renaud Regnery, Stephen Felton, Robert Blumental Gallery, New York, US (2016); Dust: The plates of the present, BAXTER ST, New York, US (2015); About Sculpture #6: Floating In A Constant Heaven, Lady Fitness – contemporary art space, Berlin, DE (2014); Scarlet Street – 325 Broome Street, Lucien Terras, New York, US (2014); The future belongs to ghosts, White Projects, Paris, FR (2014).