Cross-media artist Florian Pumhösl employs minimal aesthetics, but there’s an incredible amount to be said about his process and references. This new exhibition at the Lisson Gallery presents a series of Modernist-influenced panels: triptychs which the artist refers to as clichés. The name is not simply a comment on the process of creating new works: it’s an onomatopoeic reference to the noise made by metal in the stapling machine he uses to print the pieces.
Based in Vienna, Pumhösl is a mixed-media artist, working in painting, film and installation. All the works in this exhibition consist of rods printed onto immaculate white plaster panels using the same process of metal pressing. Each image is repeated perfectly on three different scales, such that the triptychs resemble abstract elements from an architectural drawing, and the wall space between each of the prints increases exponentially in proportion to the size of each image. It is the kind of installation that can only really work in pristine white gallery spaces such as the Lisson’s, and hard hard to imagine in a domestic setting.
The gallery’s upstairs space contains a separate body of work, again produced using the cliché method. Each of these small prints is based on a single element of a different character from the Georgian Alphabet. Rest assured, though: so intensely focussed are these works that you don’t need to be familiar with the Georgian writing system in order to appreciate this study of its aesthetics
It would be easy to dismiss Pumhösl’s work as excessively minimal. The two bodies of work on display look extremely similar to each other despite being the result of two entirely different areas of research performed by the artist. However, precisely this in-depth research and the innovative method with which he has produced the work – both of which are initially hidden from the viewer – are what makes Pumhösl’s prints so fascinating.
Admission: FREE
Address and map: 52-54 Bell St, London NW1 5DA
Nearest tube: Edgware Road
| What | Florian Pumhösl, Lisson Gallery |
| Where | Lisson Gallery, 52-54 Bell Street, London, NW1 5DA | MAP |
| When |
15 Nov 13 – 11 Jan 14 |
| Price | |
| Website | Click here for more information |
