In line with the philosophy of the fair we will be presenting two solo exhibitions: Sean Branagan’s latest moving image pieces that explore video and painting and Paul Cole’s recent plasticine assemblages /collages.

Sean Branagan’s work is characterized by the complexities and ambiguities of form, reality and perception that arise when moving image is fused with the materials and practices associated with painting, sculpture and architecture.

Previously, the ‘Painting with People’ moving image canvases, exhibited in London and Edinburgh in 2008, are seminal because they propose two supplementary formal elements for painting: ‘movement’, which for example, is calculated to operate against and within, the edge of the canvas; and ‘time’ which regulates the rhythm of movement in each canvas. The ‘subjects’ are deficient of free will, passive; stripped down to their barest (literally) to comply entirely with the formal needs of the painting.

The new pieces that we will be exhibiting in Basel have additional capacity for engagement. For example the act of viewing Smokin, 2009 (opposite top) becomes an act of participation; the naked female subject blinks and stares back at you so that conventional power structures of viewer over art-object are replaced by the pace and scope of a quasi-real encounter. In this and Un-Still Life, 2009 (opposite) , Branagan allows selective reflection on works such as Manet’s 'Olympia’ 1863)and Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber,’ (1602)by Spanish Still Life painter Juan Sánchez Cotán.

In 2007 Paul Cole began making small plasticine sculptures to bring about monumental paintings (e.g. in the painting ‘Pilot’, a figure is sandwiched between giant coloured blobs). It was noted at the time that this method of instigating a painting provided a curious and ‘undefined’ narrative, but also rendered the work with an enduring sense of the ‘still life’. Subsequently Cole inverted the process, making wall based works with the plasticine itself, using 2d images from newspapers and magazines as his springboard.

We will be exhibiting Cole's latest series of works inspired by 70's porn magazines. Works such as Christianne with Green Boots, 2008 (opposite) and Angie Reed, 2008 (bottom) are named after the porn stars featured on the magazine pages used.

The Solo Project
St. Jakobshalle
Bruglingerstrasse 19-21
CH-4052 Basel
Switzerland

image credits from top:

Sean Branagan:

1.Smokin' 2009
moving image and paint on canvas
(private collection)

2.Un-Still LIfe, 2009
moving image, paint and collage on canvas

Paul Cole:

3.Christianne with Green Boots, 2008
plasticine, pinned and glued on board
(private collection)

4.Angie Reed, 2008
plasticine, pinned and glued on board

For more information please email:
office@goodengallery.com