Denise Hawrysio vs Al Masson

Etching Plate as Shield / Into Intimacy

11. september 2009
11. oktober 2009

Denise Hawrysio vs Al Masson

11. september – 11. oktober 2009

Denise Hawrysio

 Etching Plate as Shield
Denise Hawrysio work pursues the conceptual possibilities of printmaking, especially in relation to her notion of site-specificity. Hawrysio produces her prints by employing external agents: human and physical. The prints are a collaboration between the artist and the world as she finds it; the actions and motions of Hawrysio’s surroundings leave their mark on her art, with the result that each print is a still, a frozen interface between the materials of art and the physicality of the world.

At Danske Grafikeres Hus she will be showing her most recent work; Etching Plate as Shield based on a series of incidents in London where social problems have resulted in fatal injuries: the etching plate is attached to the front of a jacket while she reenact the actions that led to these accidents. The final work is diptych consisting of a photograph of the reenactment and the etching itself, with the marks that have occurred during the process and an accompanying text that describes the incident.

Denise Hawrysio was born in Toronto and currently lives in London, UK. She received her BFA from Queen’s University, Canada, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She works in a variety of media including site-specific installation and prints and has exhibited her work throughout Europe, the United States and Canada. In 2006 she curated and participated in the group exhibition 15/1 (3) at Overgaden Institute for Samtidskunst and in 2004 had a solo exhibition at RACA in Copenhagen.

She is currently teaching and working in Vancouver at University of British Columbia.

www.hawrysio.com

Al Masson

Into Intimacy

Installation with drawing/print collages and a slide show animation

Under the form of an Installation, Al Masson will present some ink drawing collages with old found schoolbook print cuttings. In connection will be shown a slide show drawing animation.

Each time when visiting the exhibitions in the small room upstairs at “Danske Grafikeres Hus”, Al Masson has had the feeling to be in a time vacuum. Like finding oneself in a small part of a brain where an intimate memory would be hidden. The space has an intimacy of a child room. With this kind of intimacy level in mind Al Masson wish to develop a close dialogue between the works and the audience through the surrounding ambiance. The installation process as in other Al Masson’s works, propose a full “physical” experience to the “public-traveller” when entering the installation, a sort of travel in another space.

The ink drawings and prints collages exhibited are through their associations showing weird “fictional intimate” images. Is it Al Masson intimacy that is proposed there? Or else are they just imaginative association of ideas bursting up between the two mediums a kind of jeu d’images instead of jeu de mots. Still the audience should discover under the diverse “layers” a mutual “world” that they could associate themselves with. These disturbing and also funny images in this destabilizing space should remind a “memory” like having opened by accident a forbidden room. The slide show animation with music presented on a small screen will be not only a way to make people stay longer in the space but an invitation into a wandering story that never ends and just asks a question.

Al Masson, born in Marseille France, lives in Denmark since 1996 after many years in New York. He has studied at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts Brussels and Art Student League, New York.

www.almasson.com