SMOLKA CONTEMPORARY | DÜSSELDORF
ULI AIGNER @ ART DÜSSELDORF 2024
Duration: April 12 -14, 2024
Location: Booth F08, Areal Böhler, Hansaallee 321, 40549 Düsseldorf
-> www.art-dus.de
-> www.smolkacontemporary.at
Smolka Contemporary is pleased to announce our participation at Art Düsseldorf with a solo presentation by Uli Aigner in the “Retromania” section.
“Retromania”
Uli Aigner is showing three large-format coloured pencil drawings and an installation with ONE MILLION porcelain vessels.
The new drawings show motifs that seem to follow an archaeological canon of forms. Uli Aigner distils and unites humans, animals, plants and vessels in the lines. The drawings reflect the forms and stories of prehistoric cultures – a humanity at the beginning of its development, like children.
Uli Aigner draws large, as the act of drawing is the actual performance for her. Slowly and quickly, in layers or only as isolated lines, a moving pictorial surface between ornamental and representational emerges. Uli Aigner follows the world of prehistoric forms into the present. This series of drawings trace the subconscious, the recognisable and, above all, the common in the world around us.
For the first time, the artist is also presenting a specially developed porcelain frame, consisting of 16 porcelain parts, produced with the support of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory (KPM) Berlin. A screenprint edition was also created based on the drafts for the drawing “Childhood of Humankind I”.
Uli Aigner is also showing a new ONE MILLION series for Art Düsseldorf. ONE MILLION is Aigner’s larger-than-life analog-digital project that she started in 2014, for which she produces chronologically numbered porcelain vessels on the potter’s wheel and digitally archives their distribution on a world map.
As a spatial installation, Aigner will place these approximately 30 vessels in various sizes, some of which will be fire-gilded on the inside, on a variable shelf sculpture made of metal and beech wood and juxtapose them with the drawings. The shapes of these vessels bridge archaeological artefacts and artificial intelligence (AI), as this new vessel edition is based on templates that were designed by an AI. Aigner’s new artist book entitled BE SILENT TOUCH LOOK SWALLOW on her project with AI forms will be on display alongside the installation
In her work, Uli Aigner sets a deliberate counterpoint to the ephemeral tendencies of our time. She creates each vessel and each drawing by hand, deliberately and intuitively. It is an exploration of our common history. Uli Aigner shows how craftsmanship, technology and the resulting timeless forms and functions have been handed down for thousands of years, are deeply rooted in humankind’s past and can be found in the present. She is tracing the theme of “retromania” all the way back to its origins.
Childhood of Humankind I, 2024, Colored pencil on paper, 285 x 213 x 9 cm
Childhood of Humankind II, 2024, Colored pencil on paper, 247 x 195 x 5 cm
Childhood of Humankind III, 2024, Colored pencil on paper, 258 x 195 x 5 cm
Archaeology I, 2024, Screenprint, 15 + 5 AP, framed, 107 x 76,8 cm
ONE MILLION - Be Silent Touch Look Swallow, 2024, Wood, Steel, and Porcelain, 220 x 190 x 35 cm
ONE MILLION - Be Silent Touch Look Swallow, 2024, Photo on Dibond
