Galleries in Paris » Esther Stocker

STOCKER – PANE

Galleries — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 17:00:29 +0000

Alberta Pane Gallery is pleased to present the fourth solo exhibition of the Italian-Austrian artist Esther Stocker entitled Loving Imperfectly in its Parisian space. New sculptures and paintings by the artist will create an enveloping and unique installation in the gallery space. Esther Stocker is internationally renowned for her paintings and installations made in an abstract and geometrical perspective, the two genres being closely related to each other. The artist’s installations are three-dimensional projections of her paintings, exclusively made with a limited palette of black, grey and white. Could they be described as spatial, sculptural paintings or rather as pictorial spaces? E s t h e r S t o c k e r b r e a k s t h e g e n r e s of a r t , appropriating herself of floors, walls, and ceilings; creating her own structural space inside the exhibition spaces. “In this exhibition, I want to combine sculptures with p a i n t i n g s . They are structural works with interruptions in geometry, more precisely: systems that show both order and disorder. I want forms to become free of our expectations. It’s as if we were “constrained” by the things we know and this condition can restrict the space we give to our imagination. I am looking for undefined, vacant, “open” and free points. There are structures that have an open, free character because the elements inside them are not combined in a logical way and therefore never create a coherent whole. For me, this is the potential of the free form: something incomplete that can be viewed as “trend”, but which will never come to completion. In my paintings and sculptures, I want to describe the ambiguity and uncertainty of a system. I use the precision of a system to question the system itself. I try to liberate and abandon our ways of understanding and looking which are linked to the recognizable nature of the forms, and which distinguishes us from each other often unconscioulsy. » Esther Stocker

STOCKER – PANE

Galleries — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 15:39:07 +0000

Based on anarchic structures

Alberta Pane gallery is delighted to present the third exhibition of the work of Italo-Austrian artist Esther Stocker at the gallery. The exhibition will associate an original site specific installation with new paintings and sculptures by the artist. We are proud as well to announce the recent release of the last artist’s catalogue, including several texts written by authors such as Monika Machnicki, Gunther Oberhollenzer and Karine Tissot, of whom we propose an extract about the latest installation by Esther Stocker at the Kunsthalle Palazzo in Liestal, Switzerland.

“I’ve been fascinated for some time by the imprecision of exactitude: for me rules and confusion are akin. They even form a single thing at times,” Esther Stocker explains.

If we consider the evolution of her output chronologically, the “thing” she is speaking of first took shape in her work in painting. [...] In Stocker’s work, there is nothing to connect with one kind of spiritualism or other, as was the case in the painting of Mondrian or Malevich, precursors in the use of the grid motif. Line in Stocker’s art is straight, black or white—in contrast with the background—more or less massive, and unvarying. Whether horizontal or vertical, it plunges from one edge of the support to the other. Crossing a few lines of the same sort, more or less broad, it divides the field of the painting into uniform sections of flat unmodulated paint. That is the underlying grid in all of Stocker’s works. And it is difficult to overestimate the leading role the grid has played in painting and in the painting of this young woman in particular, namely, of drawing attention—with a certain vigor—to the fact that we find ourselves in front of an artificial object with its own characteristics that place it apart from the world of objects. [...] In Stocker’s work, it is technically the result of a meticulous application of scotch tape—again, scotch tape, though used this time to protect the canvas and not to draw a line, as in the case of her three-dimensional installations—in a sensitive balance that combines the force of the line with a minimum of gestures, concise, thought out, and enlisted to create a powerful visual impact.

In its deployment, the grid allows the Austrian artist to explode genres. Indeed, how would it be possible to restrictively place her pictures in the register of painting or her installations in that of sculpture? She who calls herself a painter above all has in fact managed to literally quit the frame of the painting and physically enter into a dialogue with all kinds of buildings. [...] For some time now three-dimensional space has become an inescapable component of her pieces, in which the presence of a form or sign can prove to be as important and powerful as the absence of form. More complex than meets the eye, her two-color devices cantruly colonize the architecture of the venues in which they are shown. In certain situations, the artist interrupts the lines, amplifies them and deconstructs the geometrical forms that are set up on the walls, as well as the floors and ceilings. Viewers then find themselves immersed, at the center of optical illusions in three dimensions whose only function, as the example in Liestal has already made clear, is to reveal the space.

Whatever changes are made to the basic grid, they render Stocker’s pieces imperfect, like systems without logic. Those pieces are not always the result of something that is added, but also of something that is taken away. They often come across then like missing families that have apparently disappeared in succeeding layers. For example, one counts three superimposed layers of white squares in the grid decorating the Tonspur passage of Vienna’s Museumquartier before any trace of the black orthogonal lines eventually makes its way through. Fascinated by blanks which constitute gaps, openings or silences, the artist spoke about the long-term installation she recently did in Metz for the Mazelle parking garage opposite the Pompidou Center and explained that “the weft demonstrates that a structure is always something other than the sum of its parts. The illusory character of the motif should awaken the viewer’s curiosity.” [...]

In the year 1997, the artist set up a kind of alphabet. And from that initial alphabet there emerges not only a veritable vocabulary but a form of literature. This is all the more obvious in the space when the geometrical system becomes less rigid and other parameters have to be taken into account, like light or the viewer’s movements around the venue. Dictated by a more or less sustained pace, those movements indeed allow one to verify that a spatial geometry cannot be as strict as on a canvas since with movement, it is being endlessly distorted, superimposed, endlessly disappearing and springing back to life… in favor of a variable imagery.

STOCKER – PANE

Galleries — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 11:18:14 +0000

Form Follows Vision

Alberta Pane gallery is proud to present the second solo show of the Italo- Austrian artist Esther Stocker. For her first exhibition at the gallery, she completely occupied the space with a big installation of black tape, appearing as a three-dimensional projection of her paintings. This » geometrical railing « , interrupted by cuts, broke the rhythm and the geometrical order of the gallery, and generated a new perception of the space. The gallery itself became a work among the works. For this second solo show, the artist presents a series of works that have never been exhibited before : the models of her museum installations and her big format works realised in situ. These preliminary works in the realization of the projects in the urban space as well as in museums show us how from a shape, from a set of volumes, a variation of tone, color, rhythm, we manage to activate a process of changing perception and vision: Form Follows Vision. As she describes it concerning the permanent installation recently realized in Metz for the Mazelle parking in front of the Pompidou Center: » The presence of a shape, a sign can be also important and powerful as the absence of shape. The weft demonstrates that a structure is always something else than the sum of the parts. The ‘imaginary’ character of the motive has to awake the curiosity of the beholder ».

As an heir to historical art movements such as Geometric abstraction, Gruppo T and 1960s’ Op art, Esther Stocker continues the research in vision and perception of space in a social and contemporary approach, also being influenced by new technologies. The creation of her pieces is inseparably connected to a highly elaborated mathematical discourse, an essential part of her artistic method. The artist’s reflexion is focused on the question: “How is a perfect system imperfect in reality?” Her geometric structures are based upon eternally self-repeating modules that create a seemingly ordered visual rhythm, to which the artist adds aberrations in order to generate an adjacent but new rhythm. This introduction of deviation in the optical balance, similar to 16th century’s mannerist architectural approach, creates surprise and emotion through the purposeful disruption of order and plane dimension.

Born at Schlanders, Italy in 1974, Esther Stocker has studied at the Fine Art Academies of Vienna and Brera-Milan, as well as at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She regularly exhibits in museums and art centres throughout Europe (Germany, Italy, France,..) and the US. Among others her work has been shown at the South London Gallery (« Beyond these Walls ») in 2009, at CCNOA of Brussels (« Abstract Thought is a warm puppy ») and at the Museum of Modern Art of the Ludwig foundation in Vienne (« geometrisch betrachtet ») in 2008, at the Galerie im Taxispalast of Innsbruck in 2006 and at AR/GE Kunstgalerie Museum of Bolzano in 2004. In 2011 Esther Stocker presents her solo show « Destino Comune » at MACRO in Rome, she also takes part in the exhibitions « Fu!nf Räume » of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and « Abstraction/Quotidien » and « Abstraction/Modernité » of CAC Passerelle at Brest. In 2012 Tracing the Grid. The Grid in Art after 1945, Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart,Allemagne, Mind the System Find the Gap, Z33- House for Contemporary Art, Hasselt, Belgique.

Galerie Alberta Pane – Paris 3

Galleries — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:22:32 +0000

Founded in 2008 in Paris by Alberta Pane and specialized in contemporary art, the gallery supports international artists, promoting the conceptual force of their projects.The gallery also encourages artists’ experimentation in space and urges them to work in balance with their environment. The interpretation and analysis of our time is the main purpose of their reflection.
With several exhibitions per year and international art fairs, the gallery has realized important projects in collaboration with museums, cultural institutions and international galleries.

In May 2017 the gallery opened its second venue in Venice, a former carpenter’s shop of 350m², transformed into an evocative exhibition space. In the same year, the gallery undertook an editorial venture: Edizioni Alberta Pane. This new series of publications reinforces the role of the gallery as promoter of the artistic activity, fostering the public fruition, and the relationship of the artists with institutions, collectors and editorial production.

Artists: Gayle Chong Kwan, Marie Denis, Romina De Novellis, Igor Eškinja, Christian Fogarolli, Luciana Lamothe, Marie Lelouche, Marcos Lutyens, Ivan Moudov, Fritz Panzer, Michelangelo Penso, Michele Spanghero, Esther Stocker, João Vilhena