SUM

MARK WALLINGER
SUM

Opening: 8. October, 2013, 19h
Exhibition Duration: 9. October – 14. November, 2013

Mark Wallinger is a British artist, living and working in London. Following a previous show, W – E (2005), Galerie Krinzinger now presents a second exhibition with the artist. Wallinger’s work has persistently caught international attention; in State Britain (2007) he reconstructed a protest against the Iraq War originally mounted by Brian Huw in front of the Houses of Parliament, the work was shown in a solo exhibition at the Tate Britain. Ecce Homo (1999), a life-sized sculpture of Christ, was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, and was a central element in his British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2001). In 2007 he received the renowned Turner Prize.

Mark Wallinger works across painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance and installation. In his oeuvre he explores questions regarding identity, religion and nationality. In the exhibition sum, he presents an extensive new group of self-portraits which are shown here as a series.

The self-portraits consist of the letter “I” repeatedly painted onto canvas with black acrylic. The typography resembles standard Times New Roman, but here is rendered in the artist’s hand with increasing expression. Just like practicing one’s own handwriting, the series here resembles an enumeration of the various ways to write “I”. In these works Wallinger ironically questions the individualism that is implicit to the genre of self-portraiture.

I am Innocent (2010) plays further upon the idea of portraiture, in particular its painterly conventions and role in recording the powerful for posterity. Here a copy of Velazquez’s painting of Pope Innocent X (1665) is suspended from the ceiling, elegantly framed by the gallery doors. It spins gently, its legendary omniscient gaze now physically following the viewer.

In Shadow Walker (2011) the artist has filmed himself walking through the streets of Soho. The video refers to Charles Baudelaire’s idea of the flaneur – a modern individual who while roaming the city becomes a passionate observer of the diversity of the urban environment. Everything seems to be in flux and ephemeral and as long as the flaneur keeps moving everything also appears infinite. The shadow is a central element in this stroll, paradoxically representing a presence through its immateriality.

From the Shaftesbury Avenue we move further down London’s streets; in the last room of the exhibition we are confronted with Ever Since (2010) an almost life size projection of a traditional Pall Mall Barber Shop, complete with a mesmeric turning red and white pole. The video’s sense of timelessness is actually produced by infinite looping just two seconds of film. In this work, Wallinger focuses on the relationship between film and real time, creating an unreal sense of time’s passage in the viewer. The piece is typical of Wallinger’s play upon conventions in art, creating slippages between expectation and perception.