TATJANA DOLL

'Recession'

Jun 27th > Sep 6th  2008

Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art presents “Recession”, the first solo show in the gallery of the German artists Tatjana Doll (Burgsteinfurt, 1970).

Tatjana Doll is best known for her large-scale paintings in which she employs a vocabulary assembled from images of life in the contemporary cities. Always figurative, and using recurrent motifs, her work can be broken down into several thematic groups: vehicles, containers, seats (stadiums, cinemas) and urban signage. Common places, easily recognizable, that think the visual repertoire of our contemporary society.

Her painting is clear and direct. Admittedly bi-dimensional, Doll moves away from a key characteristic in painting, illusion, to present canvas upon which a sole element is portrayed on a white background. This choice to employ pre-existing images is interrelated with the artist’s will to deny the originality drive. The immediate reading that the works make possible, allow Doll to empty the signs of their meaning allowing the artist to concentrate solely on the image itself. By not making the decision on the content, Doll limits her subjectivity to her intervention in the search for the most intense way to paint.

At Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art Tatjana Doll presents a group of 70 paintings of road signs. The artist decided to extend the poles in order for the sign itself to be located close to the ceiling. This decision bores two consequences, a violent encounter with a forest of bars (a grid that reminisces some minimalist interventions), which encloses the spectator within the space of the gallery; and the effort-making necessity to find the focus of the painting.

This installation, specifically conceived for Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, reflects the artist’s observation of the profusion of signs on the Portuguese roads and materializes her rumination about a society that, in seeking sophistication, needs to implement more and more rules of conduct. A society, which is increasingly oppressive of its citizens and that constantly imposes the paths they are to circulate.

Tatjana Doll presents as well a group of paintings portraying one truck, three Lamborghinis and a couple of Dollar rolls. The whiteness of the canvas representing an erasure of the original context, allows the spectator to locate the object in an imaginary setting.

The title of the exhibition although with a clear economical association (which is also true for the paintings themselves) relates not to the art market but more towards a stagnation of growth (road signs) as well as a suspension of content of the paintings.

Until July 13th the work of Tatjana Doll can also be seen in the exhibition “Institutional and Poetic Violence” at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto.