Insufferable Nebulae and other couplings
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24.09.04 – 23.10.04
Insufferable Nebulae and other couplings
Insufferable Nebulae (Grandville), 2004
installation view (passageway)
Located in the dingy first floor passageway at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, in a space that links many of the artists' studios and the Studio 12 Project Space, is the ephemeral installation Insufferable Nebulae (Grandville). This constellation of hundreds of paper Tossers (stares, ogles, winks, and glances torn from magazines) loosely takes its cue from the mercantile phantasmagorias of the Nineteenth Century French satirist Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard (a.k.a. Grandville). That work leads on to the other couplings section of the show in the Project Space proper, where a series of hybrid drawing/print works, the Compress (erased and corrected magazine pages imprinted with the rubbed impressions of barely visible, overexposed figure-couplings), inhabit the space with corner and window cavity congestions; the silicone-filled cicada carapaces collectively known as the Cicatrix.
Compress, 2002
work on paper drawn under the pressure of erasing other images, then corrected
220 x 310mm
collection of the artist
References;
Christian Capurro is a sophisticate inspired by arcane reference - see title of corridor installation, "Insufferable Nebulae (Grandville)" - but his highly wrought works have a surprisingly visceral impact. Ghastly disembodied eyes, torn from glossy fashion mags (a resource familiar from another of his works) have been stuffed into the wire mesh of the low ceiling. Capurro's apparent caprice turns this cavelike space into a chamber of horrors. In Studio 12, with its piles of cicada carapaces and barely legible 'drawings', erasure becomes a sort of erudition. It's lovely, puzzling stuff.
Penny Webb, 'Eyes wide open', The Age, October 15, 2004 (image).
other couplings with 'Cicatrix' corner (detail), 2004
mixed media
Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces
200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy
Victoria 3065 Australia.