Malcolm Green
The New Topography of Modern Literature
2 March – 6 April 2024
Sausages suffering from existential angst and social isolation?
Gallery Gudmundsdottir is delighted to present "The New Topography of Modern Literature” a solo exhibition of Berlin based British artist Malcolm Green, b. 1952.
This exhibition provides an insight into Malcolm Green's body of work from 1976 to the present. With a background spanning professional dance, publishing and translation, Green proves to be a keen observer and mediator of contemporary culture. His works not only construct a new topography encompassing objects, ideas, and etymology but also present a visual narrative that reflects his multifaceted identity, particularly in modern literature, as an artist.
The "Wurst Series," created between 1999 to 2001, comprises glossy paintings (elasmos) of sausages on pedestals in the most intriguing positions. Each painting is accompanied by a title that sets the scene, "Blauwurst am Rosen Montag” or “Weisswurst am Blauen Montag." Inspired by the works of Francis Bacon and the recently deceased Günter Brus, these sausage depictions, resembling limbless humans, employ figurative distortion and abstraction. However, Malcolm Green diverges from the earnestness of social isolation and existential angst typical of Bacon's works and Brus's actions by infusing his pieces with humour as well as a dash of ridicule.
Green's allusion of a painting-by-numbers style adds an additional layer of playfulness to the works as this technique enhances the ambiguity of identity and corporeality. Blurring the distinctions of inside and outside, the sausages become representations of the intricate nature of individuals beyond conventional ideas of identity and self-definition.
The series "Towers 1 –16," spanning from 2001 to 2023, present works built from layers of inadvertently hardened gloss paint accidentally dried up on a lid of tin, accumulating throughout the artist's daily studio routine. Evolving over time, these unplanned towers have become integral to Malcolm Green's body of work. Symbolising the passage of time, routine regularity, and the value of consistency, each tower represents the artist's patience, meticulously layered with different paint shades.
In the series of boxes and sculptures containing found objects and sentences, spanning from 1976 to the present, Green indulges in the childlike joy of collecting and exploration. Finding beauty in items discovered on the streets or in flea markets, he reveres them as treasures, or perhaps as ethnographic or archeological finds, leaving their original state or essence untouched. By archiving them in custom made boxes, he grants them a second life transforming these ordinary materials into time capsules.
Through his art, Green humorously navigates translation intricacies, deftly blurring the line between sense and nonsense while skilfully mapping the meaning of everyday objects, words and thoughts. "The New Topography of Modern Literature" aligns with the ethos of elevating the mundane to the extraordinary, encouraging viewers to ponder the interplay between the common and the exceptional.
Malcolm Green
Ex-dancer (including the Hans Kresnik company in Heidelberg) and ex-choreographer, still-publisher, editor and translator (not least co-founder and co-director of Atlas Press, London), and even longer visual artist (first appearance at the Whitechapel in 1974): Malcolm Green paints, hammers, prints, films and makes experimental music in or for among other places China, Iceland (often), Germany, Denmark, Poland (1st Lodz Biennale), USA, Ireland, UK, Holland, Australia... and is further known for his Red Sphinx artist’s books (in collections at for instance MOMA, V&A, Serralves, Reine Sofia, Warburg Institut). He is a founder member of the Dieter Roth Academy and member of the Collège de `Pataphysique. Frequent collaborations with among others Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam und Recital Records in California.
Website www.redsphinx.de