Gary Webb
The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, the Kunsthaus Glarus and Le Consortium, Dijon, are proud to present the first solo exhibition in Switzerland and in France of artist Gary Webb. This exhibition will consist of 10 recent and specially made new works.
Gary Webb’s sculptures explore the visual, tactile and chromatic potential of materials.The artist presents surprising configurations made of organic and industrial elements, including Perspex, neon, marble, cut-out-metal, fabric, and rubber. When organic materials are used such as wood, sand, marble or rock crystal, they are given a synthetic twist. The material employed often relate to what could be described as the contemporary ‘indoor culture’ , an aesthetic of shopping malls and drive-ins awash with bright colours and shiny plastics. Some elements are specially commissioned from factories, others are bought directly from hardware stores and toy shops.
Gary Webb’s sculptures bring together spatially bold constructions with vivid colours. And yet there is an intangible component to his works. Colour and transparency is used to divest weighty forms of their solidity; flat planes, curving lines and mobile elements are locked into fragile equilibriums. The immaterial is also encountered in the many formal plays with transparency and reflection, or in the sounds which he introduces as a further way in which to experience the space occupied by both sculpture and viewer.
Gary Webb’s sculptures hover between abstraction and figuration. They speak of the relationship between painting and drawing, and sculpture. The artist’s works rake the art historical ruins of the past to experiment with the sculptural possibilities of the future. We find in these works echoes of the new sculptures pioneered by Anthony Caro (Caro and the New Generation sculptors in Britain in the 1960s, applied colour to 3dimensions in a pictorial way), as well as the pure use of colour as a sculptural medium explored by artists such as Donald Judd. Despite the richness of historical memory found in Gary Webb’s works, his sculptures maintain a marked degree of poetic lightness and mundanity. This is emphasised by titles which evoke popular culture, absurd imagery and specific moods, such as Mumdadland, 1997, Paranoidmountain, 2000, Sound of the blue light, 2002.
Gary Webb (b. 1973) lives and works in London. He has participated in various group exhibitions such as ‘Die Young, Stay Pretty’, ICA, 1998;’ Casino 2001’, SMAK, Ghent, 2001; ‘Early one morning’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002. Solo exhibitions include ‘Deep Heat. T Reg Laguna’, Chisenhale Gallery, 2004.
Curated by Katya García-Antón
