IGNACIO URIARTE : 9 TO 5
FEINKOST, BERLIN
JANUARY 9 - FEBRUARY 22, 2009
FEINKOST is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Germany of Spanish artist Ignacio Uriarte. Occupying the gallery with new and recent work, "9 to 5" is a colloquial reference to the average workday; a period of time filled with occasional moments of productive procrastination in which one makes an effort to look or be busy and get the job done.
Ignacio Uriarte began his professional life with a career in business administration. Understanding the probabilities offered to him by cubicle life he diverted his practice for a career in fine art. Somehow he brought the office with him. Every conceivable material or gesture one might associate with the business workplace such as biro pens, A4s, Microsoft Excel, Xerox machines and writing blocs are deftly administered like a painter using a color spectrum.
Drawing from a history of conceptual practices from the 60s and 70s, artists like Sol LeWitt, Hanne Darboven and Robert Ryman are filtered through the roller ball of a Bic pen as the behavioral aesthetics of office tedium are converted into vertiginous monochromes, color studies and haptic doodles. Uriarte achieves a delicate balance between analog and digital, which becomes a painfully present lexicon analyzing how the machine is capable of replicating something human -- such as an error -- and the human something mechanical like a perfect form.
