Claudia Wieser
Stories
2nd December 2016 – 24th February 2017

On Friday December 2nd 2016 at 7 pm Studio SALES di Norberto Ruggeri is proud to present Stories, the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Claudia Wieser (Freilassing, 1973, lives and works in Berlin). Claudia Wieser, who inaugurated on November 23rd the group show Thinking Tantra at the Drawing Room in London, is currently having a residency in Rome at the German Academy – Casa Baldi and these months spent in Italy have given her the opportunity to work closely with the local territory and the institutions of our country. This experience gave birth to three projects, of which the solo show at SALES is the first appointment, followed by the presentation of a big installation at Fondazione Memmo in Rome (16th December 2016), where she is preparing an intervention in the columnated room of Palazzo Ruspoli. Then, in the first months of 2017 she will show her work at the Museo Villa Croce in Genoa, where she will be present with a major site-specific installation that the artist is going to realize for the grand staircase of the Museum, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa, Director of the institution. Stories is the title of this solo show at Studio SALES. For those who are familiar with Claudia Wieser’s work this title might sound unusual and it introduces an element of newness in respect of her previous exhibtions, where the fil rouge was always traceable in a formal element common to the exhibited works: their “being objects”, their spacial and architectural character or the medium of the artwork, thus leaving the viewer free to deduce the poetry and the harmonies intrinsic to the visual composition. The exhibtion Stories is shaped in a different manner. On the walls it is presented a new series of small coloured pencils and gold leaf drawings expressly realized by the artist for this occasion. Next to them, there are 5 black and white photographs: their subjects are details of a few videostills taken from the the 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo film, The Battle of Algiers.
It is the first time that Claudia Wieser introduces so overtly in an exhibition a strong narrative element, thus explaining the title chosen for the show: Stories. The insertion in the show of these 5 photographs suggests to the viewer that the overall exhibition is somehow connected with the present historical context, thus leaving its formal aspect to a second reading. In the film The Battle of Algiers Claudia Wieser sees the example of a perfect balance between the representation of a historical fact, as well as its urgency and violence, and the construction of a peculiar and evocative visual universe. This is the reason why the artist chose to introduce this particular subject in her show.The 5 photographs lead the viewer towards the rest of the exhibition, that displays the most iconic motives in Claudia Wieser’s practice. The big wallpaper at the entrance of the exhibtion combines details of the photographs with partial images of palaces and marble columns taken from architecture books, that creates a modern trompe l’oeil and reshapes the gallery space, where the artist arranged a few sculptures.Two podiums covered with hand-made ceramic tiles realized by Cludai Wieser in her studio and 6 new wooden sculptures; some of them are just painted, the others have reflcting surfaces that mirror the viewers, the surrounding space and the other artworks in the show. These last ones are sort of fake objects, pure compositions of elementary forms, self-referential and with no use. Their visual combination in the space enlivens the show, that lastly takes form in the juxtaposition of multiple lines, echoing one another: the pure lines of the drawings and the sculptures, the spacial lines of the wall installation and finally the naturalistic lines of the bodies in the photographs.