Line Weight
January 21 – April 20, 2017
Opening: Friday, January 20, 2017 | 6 – 9 pm
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to present Line Weight, Marcius Galan’s (b. 1972) first solo exhibition in Berlin. The work of the São Paulo-based artist comprises sculptures, objects, drawings and other media, and it engages with the perception of the artwork in both architectural (outer) and poetic (inner) surroundings. It is often geometric objects with clear form language which, in relation to our perception of the commonplaces (lines, dimensions, materiality), demand a definition of space and a classification of visual boundaries. Seemingly value-neutral forms become sensors of our individual perceptiveness.
In the exhibition Line Weight, the works on display all refer to the idea of the line. On the one hand, as a representation of space in geometry, the line intended in its geometric form, on the other hand they also bear concrete references to architectural drawings and dioramas, as simplified implementations of the idea of the construction of space.
Galan’s concrete sculptures also relate to scale-dependent drawings which, when placed in the gallery space, entail the construction of an imaginary space. The boundaries of such constructions are vividly portrayed in poetics, a kind of poetry of drawing.
The line as an elementary part of a drawing also appears in the series of “Bureaucratic Abstraction”. The old invoices, painted on with constructional geometric shapes, create a linear structure through their strict classification. According to a new system dictated by the artist, only the entries and numbers with geometric fields are painted over. Galan compares them with “social diagrams”. Invoices that are associated with social control systems are now subordinated to a different “bureaucratic” system – an artistic one.
The works from the series “Precision Tools” represent a more subversive process of the transformation of functionality, since everyday items are turned into artistic devices and, as wall painting tools, literally leave their mark on their architectural surroundings. With the reversal of the function of the object Marcius Galan constructs the (wall) drawing.