ANSELM REYLE - ULTRACORE - <p>Le Magasin. Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.</p>

This winter, MAGASIN will present a solo exhibition by German artist Anselm Reyle. This exhibition is being realized in collaboration with the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany. It features selected works from various series created in recent years as well as new pieces developed specially for the show. His exhibition at MAGASIN will play upon the monumentality of the central space under roof, called «la Rue», which will be home to a site-specific work realized for this occasion. The galleries will display existing pieces and will provide an overview of Anselm Reyle’s work.

The repetitive use of certain patterns and materials is a characteristic feature of Anselm Reyle’s work. He handles a wide range of artistic mediums from painting to sculpture as well as works derived from found objects, which have been distanced from their original function, alienated visually and put into a new context. His artistic realm is bright and colorful. He plays with materials and textures, colors and metallic effects. He assembles modeling pastes, mirrors, glitter and acrylic varnishs, as well as fluorescent colors to revisits the codes of kitsch and ornamentality.

Anselm Reyle is interested in the qualities and caracteristics of a «cliché» specifically its capacity to touch and appeal to the viewer.
By reproducing “paint-by-number” templates with kitsch images such as cute dogs, flying dolphins or friendly horses, Anselm Reyle appeals to common childhood references. Each number refers to a specific color or a specific texture that he voluntarily arranges with disharmony. Those dissonant color and texture combinations are achieved using silver foils, mirrors, special-effect pastes, glitters, lacquers, and textured pastes. He does not seek to find colors and textures that complement each other. On the contrary, he starts from disharmony to create harmony.

His «foil paintings», folded foil arranged in colored plexiglass boxes, also appeal to the viewer with shiny and glittery effects, emphasized by the contrast between the fragile foil forms and the rigidity of the plexiglass box. The shimmer stimulates the sense of touch, while at the same time the boxes deny any possibility of tactile experience.

Characteristic of his work is also the use of various found objects that have been removed from their original function, altered visually and recontextualized. For example, he took objects from the world of farming: wagon wheels, hay carts, ploughs and bales of hay, that he completely defamiliarizes through a simple intervention, such as applying chrome gloss, neon and spray paint in order to artificially glorify those common objects. By laying on gloss and shinny ostentatious finishes to common objects, Anselm Reyle challenges their utility and intended function by giving them a new commercial value.

Anselm Reyle has been involved in several collaborative projects in recent years, such as the one he led with the traditional German porcelain manufacturer Meissen. During a tour of the workshops, Anselm Reyle noticed that defective pieces were removed before being fired and thrown into a waste box. He thought about firing and glazing this porcelain waste while it was stilll moist. This form of the trash in opposition to the immaculate quality of porcelain, reminiscent for him of the stereotype image of bourgeois living. Anselm Reyle decided then to present the works in glass cabinets – which are usually found in classic museum settings.

In his work, Anselm Reyle mixes the influence of historical schools of abstraction from the early 20th century with an evolutionary vocabulary for new industrial practices and mass production methods. Reyle’s work collapses any hierarchical distinctions that might exist between different subcultures, art history, music and architecture. By juxtaposing common objects with showy material, his work bears witness to our time and our consumer culture.