Eric & Heather ChanSchatz - In Situ
18 April—2 June 2007
Galerie Michael Janssen Cologne
Michael Janssen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Eric and Heather ChanSchatz.This exhibition is the first presentation of the artist’s work in Germany.
ChanSchatz recently completed a painting project for the permanent collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, and are currently preparing for solo exhibitions at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga,TN and the Lever House in New York.
In the paintings for „In Situ,” ChanSchatz have created their own world of places, rooms, and settings. Each painting is a private universe that welcomes interpretation and invites participation. ChanSchatz have envisioned the interiors and spaces for a collection of potential inhabitants, including their own paintings. Extending the tradition Henri Matisse and David Hockney, who embedded their own artworks into the studios they depicted, ChanSchatz similarly transfer their paintings out of their studio into spaces that continue to expand the artist’s imaginary worlds. The inserted paintings extend to effect the surrounding environment; each shape and form unfolds into rooms and chamber entrances, to furniture and to personal effects.
Though the paintings can be read as interiors, their interpretation is purposefully exible to exist on multiple levels. ChanSchatz command a vision where the abstract becomes recognizable and vice versa.The exhibition’s title, „In Situ,” accentuates for the artists this slippery, yet uniquely balanced condition in their work. Within each painting, the framed elements can be read as a window or a „picture within a picture,” while the objects that inhabit each space are both gurative and iconic. Various atmospheric conditions such as the time of day, dictate the color palette and overall harmony of each painting.
ChanSchatz unify their choreographed arrangements of form and color by screenprinting these motifs onto silk. The artists have further developed the traditional aspects of this technique to achieve a defining sensibility of delineation and color saturation, while also enhancing the very materiality of the painting itself.Theirs is a visual language that embodies the spectrum of contemporary life in a current generation experiencing moments of crisis and war, the progression of globalization and gender politics, themes of religion and science, and a signature vocabulary spanning the gamut from the everyday to the fantastical.
Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, In Situ, Installation view, 2007, Galerie Michael Janssen, Cologne
