June 11th –16th, 2018

Kirstin Arndt
Alan Butler
Ramon Kassam
Caroline McCarthy
Xavier Theunis

ELSÄSSERSTRASSE 215, 4056 BASEL
adjacent to Novartis Campus
3 min walk from Voltaplatz

OPENING HOURS

Tuesday – Saturday, June 12th – 16th: 10 am – 7 pm

SATURDAY PUBLIC SOIRÉE: 7 – 9 pm

Green On Red Gallery is pleased to announce attendance at VOLTA 14, Basel. The gallery presents a booth with the work of Kirstin Arndt (DE), Alan Butler (IE), Ramon Kassam (IE), Caroline McCarthy(IE) and Xavier Theunis (FR).

Kirstin Arndt has an extremely keen sense for the aesthetics of ordinary things. Their materials are often sought after and found among commercial building materials and industrial materials. Throughout this the Düsseldorf artist references the historical sources of Concrete Art. Kirstin Arndt does not simply present the materials she uses, they are as it were “re-informed” by her: She releases the things from their original functional contexts, gives them form, and lends them a new purpose.

Arndt manages to bring increased sensitivity and attention to the everyday material found, both as an artist and as an observer. In her untitled tarpaulin pieces, she has taken industrially manufactured truck tarpaulins, complete with their functional hooks and eyes, and hung them on the wall. Quite profane, but composed most exactly to produce a charged effect. One half of the tarpaulin advances to the monochrome image surface, the other is positioned so that it encloses the image area on the right edge in a baroque fold. As a result, the work literally unfolds an inner dynamic that does not distract perception from the consideration of a mere "thing in itself" at second glance. The effect is astonishing - also because this art undermines the viewer's expectations with the simplest means.

Alan Butler's work often conceptually reflects and refracts the inner-workings of the internet, the implications of new media technology, and the politics of appropriation. He received his MFA from LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore (2009). and BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2004).

Recent activities include solo exhibitions Down and Out in Los Santos, Malmö Fotobiennal, Sweden (2017); HELIOSYNTH, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin (2017); We Were Promised Anarchy, But What We Got Was Chaos, Solstice Art Centre, Ireland (2015); Youth Outreach In N. Korea, Supermarket , Stockholm, Sweden (2015); The Parallax View, Ormston House, Limerick, Ireland (2014); and group exhibitions As Above, So Below, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); Les Rencontres d'Arles,France (2017); Scissors Cuts Paper Wraps Stone, CCA Derry/Londonderry (2016) ; FUTURES: Anthology 2, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Telling Lies, RUA RED, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Please return, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2015), among others. He lectures in Fine Art Media at the National College of Art and Design. Alan Butler is represented by Green On Red Gallery, Ireland.

Ramon Kassam is an artist from Limerick City in Ireland, paintings forms the basis of his practice. Kassam’s recent work re-connects with the concept of the artist as creative subject, combining the thematic of the artist's workspace (canvas, studio, gallery and urban environment) with formal and conceptual references to the autonomous reality of modernist abstraction. Ramon is a graduate of the Limerick School of art and Design and has been exhibiting regularly since 2013. Exhibitions include: The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan (USA), The Green on Red Gallery - Dublin (Solo), The Lewis Glucksman Gallery - Cork, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2015 Solo), and EVA International Ireland's Biennale, Limerick (2014).

He has received a number of awards and residencies. These include The 16 x 16: Next Generation Bursary Award, a special initiative of the Arts Council and the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme, in recognition of the role of artists in the events of 1916. Residencies include The Embassy of Ireland in Addis Ababa - Project Residency, The RHA Tony O’ Malley Residency Award and Irish Museum of Modern Art. In addition to his practice Kassam founded and was a Director of both Wickham Street Studios, an artist studio complex and Occupy Space, a visual arts exhibition space in Limerick City from 2009-2011.

Installation view of Caroline McCarthy's work at Booth B22 VOLTA14

Caroline McCarthy: Crisps, toilet-paper, plastic bags, packaging, rubbish, furniture are some of the everyday materials brought into conversation with certain modes of art production and display, in work which explores the nature of representation, consumerism, visual hierarchy and ideas of value and taste.

Caroline McCarthy was born in Dublin and studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin; and Goldsmiths College, London. Her work has been exhibited widely, with solo shows including Green on Red, Dublin; Gimpel Fils, London; Hoet Bekaert, Ghent; Parker’s Box Gallery, New York; Limerick City Art Gallery; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Gasworks, London; Void Gallery, Derry; and Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf. Group shows include Europe Exists, curated by Rosa Martinez and Harald Szeemann, MMCA, Greece (2003); East End Academy, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); To Be Continued, curated by The British Council, Helsinki Kunsthalle, Finland (2005); (Z)art curated by Jan Hoet, AbtArt, Stuttgart (2010); Group Coordination, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2014); and Dismaland, curated by Banksy, Somerset, UK (2015).

She has also worked on a number of large-scale public projects including a commission for King’s College London with the Contemporary Art Society and a citywide project for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. Her work is included in the collections of The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Allied Irish Bank, Arts Council of Ireland, Office of Public Works, Zabludowicz Collection, European Central Bank, Berge Madrid, and private collections.

The way in which Xavier Theunis formulates this question — his own plastic vocabulary, his visual singularities, his building process — are quite unique. Any reference to the window or the building process here above are very much intentional. As indeed, Theunis’ works strive to analyse the various ways in which to “construct” a painting. This is also true in his most recent projects — Vues d’atelier/Studio views and Paysages/Landscapes

The two abstract series mentioned follow a similar working pattern. Over large metal plates, colourful adhesive scraps - that have been sourced from a sign manufacturer — are gathered. A painting that is edified from scraps does naturally question the very finality of a work of art. It questions as well the relation of fine art with decoration using a two-pronged approach, which can be perilous. First, it gambles with the sourcing of the scraps and finding ways to assemble them. Second, it plays with the ambiguity of colourism when the artist himself confesses to using shades “not always self-evident and not really chosen”. Shades that he doesn’t necessarily like but that enable him to accentuate some tensions in their interconnections to each other. The result could hardly be called an image.

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