Wolfgang Breuer‌, Thomas Humphreys‌, Karin Ruggaber

Mittlere Körnung
Curated by Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez

Wolfgang Breuer
Thomas Humphreys
Karin Ruggaber

Each artist takes up a position that might be a movement backwards from modernity to a rediscovery of craft and related principles of decoration and ornamentation. Assuming an economic attitude towards their choice of material and in the expression of their ideas – an aesthetic of understatement if you like – the artists offer seemingly modest gestures of transmutation. Amidst this technical rawness and sparseness there is a sense that each artist is making poised interventions that are testing the boundaries of the materials and processes they are working with. Underwriting this is a kind of post-industrial consciousness that engages with the legacy of modernity, and is not anti-modern as such, but it touches too on alchemy, on nature, on the feminine, and on performance.

Wolfgang Breuer (b. 1966, lives and works in Berlin) has had solo shows at Schnittraum, Cologne in 2007, and Between Bridges, London in 2006. He has recently shown at Basso, Berlin, Gallery Exchange, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main and No Ideas Without Bodies, Egypted, Vienna in 2007. He also has exhibited work at Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, and Cite des Internationale Arts, Paris.

Thomas Humphreys (b. 1972, lives and works in London) has recently shown at The Approach, London and Egypted, Vienna in 2007 and Croy Nielsen, Berlin and TP, San Antonio, Texas in 2006. His most recent solo show, Corn du Soir, was at Kabine, Copenhagen in 2007.

Karin Ruggaber (b. 1969, lives and works in London) has had solo shows at the Art Now space at Tate Britain in 2006, Greengrassi, London in 2005 and 2003 and Bloomberg Space, London in 2002. She was selected by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Matthew Higgs for East International, Norwich in 2007 and her work was included in the Arts Council Collection’s How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art at the Hayward Gallery, London.