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­Galerie Opdahl is pleased to present BLEACH & BLOT OUT – Andreas Plum’s first solo exhibition in Berlin.

After figurative beginnings, the Cologne-based artist Andreas Plum has over last few years devoted himself to painting ‘in the expanded field’. Since 2008, large format works – some of them applied to the canvas or wall in situ, as is the case in BLEACH & BLOT OUT – have emerged out of an interaction between oil colours and paper streamers laid out in tracks, the oil paint simultaneously serving as adhesive. The streamers sometimes become part of the brushstrokes, whilst elsewhere their colour and material structure is left unchanged. An ornamental rhythm emerges; a relief-like and, partly, a cascade-like assemblage. The works seem palpably voluminous, poppy, and almost psychedelic; a sort of urban gestural abstraction that turns the site of the exhibition into a sensual space of experience.

Andreas Plum was born in Erkelenz, Germany, in 1977, and studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. He was awarded a guest fellowship at the Villa Romana, Florence, in 2006.

Selected solo exhibitions: 2009 Galerie Opdahl Berlin; Center Berlin; 2007, 2005, 2003, 2001 Galerie Horst Schuler Düsseldorf.

Selected group exhibitions: 2009 Die Stille zwischen zwei Aktionen, Grassereins Munich; 2008 Tobias Hantmann und Andreas Plum, Grassereins Munich; Opfer der reichen Braut, Düsseldorf; 2007 Aristoteles´ Fieber 2, Galerie van Wijngaarden & Hakkens Amsterdam; 2006 Morehouse, Villa Romana Florence; 2004 Zunge an Zündschnur, Krinzinger Projekte Vienna, curated by A. Oehlen; 2003 Bis ans Ende der Welt, Kunstverein Konstanz.

Andreas Plum lives and works in Cologne.

DAG ERIK ELGIN

LA COLLECTION MODERNE

05/02/2010 – 13/03/2010

With LA COLLECTION MODERNE, Galerie Opdahl is pleased to present the second solo exhibition in Berlin by Norwegian artist Dag Erik Elgin.

Elgin’s series of 33 small-format canvasses steer the viewer’s gaze in the direction of the otherwise barely noticed signage in public collections. The artist has brought together the titles of modern masterpieces such as Courbet’s L´Origine du Monde (1866), works by Tatlin, Braque, Duchamp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and the less known Ragnhild Keyser. Elgin only shows us the works he has selected by way of their representatives: small blow-ups of the title captions – modelled on them and keeping to the discreet colours of the established canon – are presented here in oil on canvas and evoke certain mental images on account of their specific information and typography. But on closer inspection the hand-painted signs also remind one of the atmosphere, the sounds and the smells of past museum visits, of creaking museum floorboards and the ritual of approaching and then stooping over the often almost illegible little plaques. In this way Elgin’s “Titular Paintings” playfully generate a cerebral exhibition, and much more besides. In the case of Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation No. 10 (1910) and its provenance – the painting is represented via information from three collections – it also becomes clear that the histories of certain pictures are quite literally comparable to detective novels.

Dag Erik Elgin was born in Oslo in 1962 and initially studied at the National Academy of Art in Oslo and as a DAAD grant recipient at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf.

Selected solo exhibitions: 2010 LCM Oslo, Galleri MGM, Oslo; 2008 Figure, Galleri MGM, Oslo; 2007 Körper die ewig verschwinden/Eternally Vanishing Bodies, Galerie Opdahl, Berlin; 2006 Amor Vacui, Galerie Opdahl, Stavanger

Selected group exhibitions: 2009 Kunstakademiet 100 år, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; Papieroffensiv, Galerie oqbo, Berlin; 2008 Third International Art Biennial, National Museum of Art, Beijing; 2004 Afternoon of a Duesseldorf Faun I, Galerie Andreas Brüning, Düsseldorf; berlin north, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; 2002 Carnegie Art Award, Konstakademin Stockholm, Art Hall Helsinki, Victoria Miro Gallery London, Charlottenborg Copenhagen.

Dag Erik Elgin lives and works in Oslo.

studio pick # 1 / Galerie Opdahl Showroom

Curator Emanuele Guidi presents:

Nick Laessing and Athanasios Argianas

05/02/2010 – 13/03/2010

As the first installment of studio picks – a loose series in which curators, authors and artists living in Berlin will be given the opportunity to introduce artistic positions of their choice – the Italian curator Emanuele Guidi presents Nick Laessing and Athanasios Argianas’ piece, We All Turn This Way (Crystal Receiver for Friedrich Jürgenson), 2008.

In this piece – a radio receiver in an unusual form – Laessing and Argianas make reference to Friedrich Jürgenson, the peculiar painter and opera singer who thought he could hear strange abstract phenomena in a 1957 recording of his voice, and interpreted them as messages from the dead. In 1960, according to his account, a voice told him to use a radio to receive these messages. After a long period of research Jürgenson decided to use the frequency 1445-1500 kHz (1485 kHz is now known as the Jürgenson frequency).

We All Turn This Way (Crystal Receiver for Friedrich Jürgenson) was first presented by Hans Ulrich Obrist in a performance at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2008. The piece was then also shown at the Athens biennial in 2009.

Nick Laessing (b. 1973, UK) lives and works in Berlin. Selected solo exhibitions: 2009 Excerpts from a Diary, Arcade Gallery, London; Ptototype II, Paul Freches Galerie, Paris; 2007 Nick Laessing, ARQUEBUSE, Geneva, Switzerland; 2005 Nick Laessing, Mary Mary, Glasgow; Nick Laessing, Center, Berlin / Selected group exhibitions: 2009 Present Future, curated by Simone Menegoi, Artissima Art Fair, Turin; Athens Biennial; 2008 The show will be titled after its end, Form Content Project Space, London; We All Turn This Way, performance, Frank Gehry Pavilion, Serpentine Gallery, London; Tales of Disbelief, La Galerie, Centre d’art Contemporain, Noisy-le Sec, Paris.

Athanasios Argianas (b. 1976, Gr.) lives and works in London. Selected solo exhibitions: 2010 EMST, The Project Room Commission, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; La Chambre, Xippas Gallery, Paris / Selected group exhibitions: 2009 Deste Prize; Athens Biennial.

Emanuele Guidi (b. 1978, It.) lives and works as an independent curator in Berlin. Guidi has curated, amongst others: 2010 Collective Body (Group exhibition in collaboration with Aldo Giannotti), Vienna; 2009 City 21, Video Screening, Belgrade and Zagreb; Ivan Moudov, Romanian Trick, Verona; Vladimir Nikolic, Voice-Over, Bologna. 2008 (ed.) Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions, b_books, Berlin, commissioned by the Cities on the Edge programme, Liverpool.

THE SOPHISTICATED EYE (TROMPE L´OEIL)

Christian Andersson, Kristina Bræin, Else Leirvik, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Ulrich Vogl

19/03/2010 – 24/04/2010

With THE SOPHISTICATED EYE (TROMPE L´OEIL), Galerie Opdahl presents six young international artists who all – in different ways, but always spatially – transpose trompe l’oeil elements into sculpture, installation, or object-based works.

Trompe l’oeil – playful visual deception – is a concept that was widespread in antiquity, underwent certain refinements in the seventeenth century – predominantly in architecture, book illumination and painting, and demonstrates an intellectual inventiveness as well as the sensory inclusion of the viewer. Mostly characterised by highly polished tricks, the game of illusionism and hyperrealism makes for an impressive show of the artist’s virtuosity. Nowadays the trompe l’oeil seems to be conceptually motivated more than anything; in most cases the deception becomes a visible part of the artwork; an exquisite and canny negotiation of various modes of perception. In contrast to the classical trompe l’oeil, then, the works exhibited here bring irony and self-reference even more strongly to the fore (O. M. Lund Bø, U. Vogl). And in its contemporary form, which is sometimes also reinforced by the incorporation of photography and video, the trompe l’oeil moves in the space with a new vigour (E. Leirvik, O. M. Lund Bø, E. Sæbjörnsson, U. Vogl). Whether it’s designated as Fake (C. Andersson) or as Camouflage (K. Bræin), this so-called ‘visual treachery’ retains an element of surprise even today.

Christian Andersson (*1973, Swe), Kristina Bræin (*1955, Nor), Else Leirvik (*1972, Nor), Ole Martin Lund Bø (*1973, Nor), Egill Sæbjörnsson (*1973, Ice), Ulrich Vogl (*1973, Ger)