ANDREA WINKLER, Perfect Coffee
RAINER SPANGL, The Regard

August 27 – October 7, 2017
www.deveningprojects.com

Devening Projects is very pleased to invite you to our fall 2017 opening exhibitions. A reception for Berlin artist ANDREA WINKLER and Vienna-based RAINER SPANG will kick off the season on Sunday, August 27th from 4-7pm. The exhibition continues until October 7th.***

Crime scenes are cordoned off by police stanchions guide patrons through banks; and screens block the scene of an accident – these are all methods to deter us from getting closer to things, places or valuable goods. Andrea Winkler stages appropriated re-enactments of this security-minded order to suggest a rapidly destabilizing world. She transfers these blocking devices very precisely into complex three-dimensional and accessible collages that, at the same time, always transform the surrounding architecture and the exhibition situation into a precarious and provocative scenario. The fact that the motif-constellations themselves represent deviations from the norm in relation to accidents, underlines the artist’s strategy. Andrea Winkler constructs a double-bind: on the one hand, the situations appear as a mere image or mimetic model of reality, which as art lacks any actual function; on the other hand, the works point to a real aesthetic system that creates a place with actual social regulations. This is Andrea Winkler’s first exhibition with Devening Projects.

Andrea was born in Switzerland and she currently lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. She earned a Fine Art Media from Slade School of Fine Art. Andrea Winkler has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and at the Poolhaus-Blankenese, Hamburg. She has attended residencies such as Landis + Gyr Stiftung, London and Künstlerhaus Schloss Plüschow, Germany. There have been many articles and books about Andrea Winkler, including Andrea Winkler’edited by Kathrin Busch in 2017 and ‘Letter From BERLIN’ written by David Rhodes for The Brooklyn Rail in 2010
www.andreawinkler.org

For The Regard, his second solo exhibition at Devening Projects, Rainer Spangl shows new paintings focused on the gaze. In this work, he addresses the canon of traditional portraiture through intimately scaled paintings of faces that are closely cropped to draw attention to the expression and view point of his subjects. By rendering slight nuances of facial expression and direction of attention, Spangl brings focus to the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. His specific brushwork exposes nuances of the character depicted and leaves hints of the painter’s hand. The specificity of each composition reveals Spangl’s intention to open a field of viewing directed by the gaze.

Rainer Spangl lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He has had solo exhibitions at Devening Projects in Chicago (2013, 2008) and at Song Song, Vienna (2016, 2012, 2010). His work has been exhibited at Ve.sch in Vienna (2015), Essex Flowers in New York (2014), Mauve in Vienna (2013), as well as Adds Donna in Chicago (2012) and Julius Casear in Chicago (2008). Since 2010 Rainer Spangl co-curates the Artist Lecture Series Vienna.

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Tags: Andrea Winkler, Chicago, Devening Projects, East Garfield Park, Perfect Coffee, Rainer Spangl, The Regard