September 2008: TWO PILLARS: Artist wraps CTA Orange Line pillars
Press Release
September 2008
The CTA Orange Line train rattles overhead as it crosses Harrison Avenue and swings southwest towards Midway Airport. The two massive concrete pillars supporting the tracks have been wrapped in a swirling luminescent design created by artist Friedhard Kiekeben. At street level the “Two Pillars” form an impressive gateway through which pedestrians pass, transforming a purely functional structure into a vibrant and witty piece of architecture.
A German artist, Kiekeben trained at the Royal College of Art in London. After 15 years in the UK, he is currently based in Chicago where he is a professor of printmaking at Columbia College. His work usually takes the form of digital wall drawings, etched and printed metal friezes and sculptures, as well as sequences of etchings. His projects often include tailor-made and site-specific installations—such as “Two Pillars”—that are exhibited internationally in galleries and museums.
The artist’s recent works are minimalist grids subjected to exuberant digital manipulations. Through warping, twisting and expanding, the solidity of the source image gives way to the vibrant dynamism of simulated flow patterns: “cascade”, “tumble”, “flow”. Kiekeben does not seek to create context or content for the digital source, yet the resulting plates, prints and sculptures are realigned to express structures as alive as the flow of water or blood, or the rhythm of life itself.
The massive pillar wrap designs were developed in conjunction with the recent series of intaglio prints that formed part of Caro d'Offay Galley’s recent “Cascade-Shatter-Flow” exhibition (April 25–June 6, 2008).
Additionally working in conjunction with the imagery formerly featured on the gallery postcard and the pillars, Kiekeben presents a collaboration with Konrad Biegaj for the "LUMETYPE: Objects and Their Prints” exhibit at Caro d'Offay Gallery, opening Friday, October 10, 2008.
The Columns project was sponsored by the CTA and Columbia College, Chicago. Kiekeben’s “Two Pillars” is on view on Harrison Street between Dearborn and Wabash Avenue in the South Loop.
For more information or to contact the artist call 312.583.9442 or 312.369.6880, visit www.FriedhardKiekeben.com or email fkiekeben@yahoo.com.
For more information or to contact Caro D’Offay Gallery call 773.235.7400, visit www.carodoffaygallery.com or email carodoffaygallery@gmail.com.
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Press Release
April 10th, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cascade-Shatter-Flow:
Prints and Sculptural Works by Friedhard Kiekeben
April 25th-June 6th, 2008
Friedhard Kiekeben’s solo exhibit Cascade-Shatter-Flow opens Friday, April 25th, 2008 at Caro d’Offay Gallery as a reception with the artist from 6-10 P.M. This exhibit of prints, plates and sculptures utilizes the unconventional employment of traditional printmaking techniques to reveal the flesh and blood of digital information. Kiekeben etches simple structures such as grids and binary code on\to metal plates or transfers them onto surfaces digitally, fracturing, contorting and reorienting them in the process. Kiekeben does not seek to create context or content for the digital source, yet the resulting plates, prints and sculptures are realigned to express structures as alive as the flow of water, blood or the rhythm of life itself.
Upon viewing a piece by Friedhard Kiekeben, one is struck with a sense of disorientation. This disorientation serves to remove assumption in order to communicate a broader possible system or form. As Charles Esche remarked in Friedhard Kiekeben’s 1995 Exhibition Catalogue, “he has always been concerned with the removal of illusionistic tricks from his art while maintaining the possibility of depth, both physically and intellectually.” He clearly violates traditional systems of artmaking in order to reveal the organic possibilities of rigidity.
Kiekeben’s innovative use of dichotomy, to use fixed or closed structures to reveal organic and open-ended ones, is also reiterated in his inventions of several non-toxic printmaking techniques. Each and every angle of his work and research moves with the speed of innovation in order to create possibilities just beyond the comfort and ease of convention.
Friedhard Kiekeben was formally trained at the Royal College of Art in London and is currently a Professor of Printmaking at Columbia College in Chicago, IL.
As Caro d’Offay continues to curate exhibits exploring open-ended systems, this exhibit by Friedhard Kiekeben is a prime example of how she selects artists and their bodies of work serving to express the larger, peripheral pattern of the gallery’s own open-ended system.
Caro d’Offay Gallery is located at 2204 West North Avenue in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday from 1-6 P.M. Hours are also available by appointment.
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