Press announcement ftc.

This summer ftc. Berlin presents a group exhibition featuring three international artists whose works have been selected because their basic ideas and structures explore the theme that also provides the title for the show. All three artists also borrow from the Minimal and Conceptual Art of the 1960s and ‘70s. Historical forms are taken up, further developed, and projected into a contemporary context. Formally reducing the work down to material givens causes an expansion through sensate, emotional references, assisted by the combination of form, material, and color. Above all, the reorganization of pre-existing, visual, and intellectually discernable space, as well as its translation into an aesthetic, artistic form, plays an important role in the way that the works are assembled.

Rana Begum ’s pieces are inspired by her immediate urban environment. She turns colors, forms, and materials into abstract works that ultimately possess both sculptural and painterly components. Brilliant color accents, in particular, in conjunction with the close examination of her art, reveal the nature of the work itself, along with the processes to which the materials have been subjected. Begum’s ambition for her art can be regarded as the attempt to concentrate and reduce diversely fragmented urban space to the point where it can be organized into a clear, pure form and palette, then translated into a nearly perfect artistic language.

This, too, is certainly an approach that distinguishes Lotte Geeven ’s work. She gathers ideas for her works on travels through the world. Her work is characterized by the use of very different media, which spread out in the space, take possession of it, measure it in a playful way, and then re-create it. For instance, she will hang paper pathways in the space and arrange individual props and set pieces to create large, three-dimensional installations. She regards her clear, “offensive” palette as a way of transforming various sensory perceptions. The installations are meant to excite both the eye and the mind, while at the same time, their specific statement remains deliberately vague, since the artist is primarily concerned with conveying a subjective kind of emotion. Geeven translates real, existing objects into an abstract formal language, creating new, imaginary spaces in the process.

Ignacio Uriarte calls his art “office art”, alluding to the basic materials he employs, as well as to the repetition and systematization that occurs within his groups of works - comparable to the routines of everyday office life. As is the case with Begum’s works, Uriarte’s pieces primarily emphasize the sculptural, relief-like character of the materials. Using simple folds and tear-offs, the medium is separated from the actual context, while at the same time it takes on an aesthetic component, whose pure operating processes - such as tearing a piece of paper - are comprehensible to anyone. Thus, the artist creates space in which it is possible to perceive and appreciate the material and craftsmanship in a new way.

Rana Begum, born in 1977 in Sylhet, Bangladesh, lives and works in London, Great Britain.
Lotte Geeven, born in 1980 in Eindhoven, NL, lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Ignacio Uriarte, born in 1972 in Krefeld, lives and works in Berlin, Germany.