South likes: Invitation at Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva

South likes: Invitation at Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva
Invitation
Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva, Switzerland
22 May – 12 July, 2014

Text by Michelangelo Corsaro

The show at Ribordy Contemporary gather five different takes on painting with the pretext of an invitation—hence the title—extended to five very different artists. Alex Hubbard participates to the exhibition with an abstract black painting with the name Not Yet Titled. The inform red line he paints on a black background is reprised, in a wise juxtaposition, by Daniel Heidkamp’s painting representing the action of a baseball payer. Damian Navarro references as well to the aesthetically sphere of sports with a canvas bearing a series of stickers from brands like Champion, Killer Loop, or Mercedes. The imagery evoked by marketing and communication campaign associated with these logos, generally entrenched with stereotyped notions of virility, is somehow counterbalanced by Davina Semo’s work. The slab of concrete with a spray-painted pink X on it, is named Listening to the Men Talk Sometimes Made Her Feel More Alone Than if She Were a Mile Away by Herself Under a Tree, delicately referring to subjective experiences of gender differences. Emil Michael Klein’s canvas is rather busy in describing fluid forms marked by high- and low-contrast colour associations. A series of paintings, again by Daniel Heidkamp, portraits landscapes and urban scenes with an old-fashioned taste that shuffles formal references showcased in the exhibition. In its entirety, Invitation at Ribordy Contemporary has the final result to simultaneously present five artists who, approximately born in the same period, bring the medium of painting at some very distant conclusions. Their gathering however is not an airy-fairy one, for it creates a trans-stylistic vision over shared similar artistic concerns.

http://www.ribordycontemporary.com/exhibitions-current.html