METALINIEN

With works by the artists: 

Anne Gathmann, Vanessa Enríquez, Cécile Dupaquier, Antje Blumenstein

The line as a one-dimensional geometric entity is a “meta”, is an intermediate stage of mathematical dimensions on the way to space and time. When Edwin Abbott published his novella “Flatland” in 1884, he pointed out with wit: a square from the two-dimensional world visits the one-dimensional line land to convince its king of the existence of a second space dimension. What the square does not know: there is a third dimension, even more.

The exhibition “Metalinien” at B-Part Exhibition looks from a three-dimensional perspective at lines and their formations into the two- and three-dimensional: the works shown by the four Berlin-based artists – Antje Blumenstein, Cécile Dupaquier, Vanessa Enríquez and Anne Gathmann – address in different ways the mutual conditions of line, surface and space. Sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete, they shape surfaces and space visually and haptically using the line as a starting motif. Between drawing and sculpture, between surface and object, lines serve here as a means for pictorial-spatial constructs that readjust our meanwhile also digitally influenced notions of the line as a basic element of grids and as a representational element of vectors in the real space of the exhibition. The interplay between surface and space, between drawing and installation, also refers to the interplay between design and architectural execution in the B-Part Exhibition as part of the Urbane Mitte am Gleisdreieck.

Antje Blumenstein’s metal work “folded lines 13,” produced especially for the exhibition and consisting of a bent aluminum rod, raises the question of whether this is a sculpture or a drawing in space? This question arises all the more because the work, which could also be a floor piece, is a wall piece and the shadows it casts extend the materiality of the work into the immaterial – the shadow can thus also be seen in the sense of a drawing. The work, which is part of a series, is a hinge at which the visible lines oscillate between 2D and 3D. Blumenstein’s paper work, which is also shown, is part of the series “lines”, for which the artist produced the visible folds as accurately as carefully with a ruler adjusted under the paper. The fact that the resulting angles are precisely balanced results from a deliberately generated combination of planning and practice. 

Also using angles, Anne Gathmann’s floor work “In Klammern: Perforation” achieves a surprising effect: at first glance showing only a wide 90-degree angle, the work consisting of MDF elements presents itself on closer inspection as an assembly of many 90-degree angles produced by all the more lines or edges. The fact that the surfaces used are only loosely joined also gives rise to the idea of a place of principally variable size, similar to a model whose creation is still in the process of being drawn. Do the lines of the work separate or do they connect? Gathmann’s wall piece “Wenn meine linke Hand meine rechte Hand” (“When my left hand is my right hand”), made of wood and glass, also consciously plans with a state of in-between: in the work, whose title is based on a quotation from the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (“The visible and the invisible”), a frame contains three panes of glass: two bisected formats and one continuous glass placed between the two. Due to the presence of the other two, the latter is hidden in perception.

Vanessa Enríquez speaks of “Coincidentia oppositorum”, the “coincidence of opposites”, that central concept in the thought of the philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, in reference to her work “Fluctuations VI”. This work, hanging from the ceiling of the room, is based on the base of an imaginary quadrilateral, which is actually fed on a two-dimensional plane by only two parallel fixed lines. The lines connecting those lines, also parallel to each other, hang as arcs in the room, thus expanding the quadrilateral into a three-dimensional structure. The fact that the structure, which the artist understands as a “spatial drawing” and which consists of VHS tapes hung parallel but of different lengths, forms a volume that gives the object a graphic and almost physical component makes the title of the work all the more meaningful. The two drawings by Enríquez shown from the series “Until I disappear” use the same material. They were created through repeated, meditative gestures of sticking and then removing the tapes on or from paper that had previously been made adhesive. Random lines and patterns can be seen, as a result of “micro gestures”.

Quite deliberately through the gesture of drawing, the lines in Cécile Dupaquier’s paper work “Stroke (obscure, 70×50) n°3” arrange themselves. But there are intentional irregularities here in any case: it is not only the different lengths of the strokes that give the pencil drawing an apparently spatial dimension, but it is also Dupaquier’s technique – the drawing is made on black paper, the bright impression of the pencil lines is created, contrary to common visual habits, by their reflection in the light. The work “docile”, consisting of ribbed and bent gate steel, also plays with a change from order to ambiguity. Familiar from concrete construction, these metal bars are essential in the built environment, but invisible, which makes them appealing as an artistic material. Half wall drawing, half wall sculpture, the three-part work seems to represent the transformation of a two-dimensional object (a square) into a one-dimensional object (a line). The fascinating thing: the representation is done with means of the fourth dimension, the sequence, the time.