Julia Gruner, Huseyin Sami – Tactile Space

About

TACTILE SPACE refers to the complex nature of space and how it has been perceived and addressed through art history, in particular through the practice of painting.

It was initially a term coined by Mark Rothko that he prescribed to his exploration of surface and colour and its ability to create space in and around his paintings. Rothko proposed the idea that artists do not discover space, they create it.

Julia Gruner’s and Huseyin Sami’s respective practices attempt to address and challenge the idea of space in some way, a transformative and expanded format of painting that engages the viewer in literal space. TACTILE SPACE creates a great platform from which to connect the works of the two artists as exploration of both space and colour within the gallery.

Sami’s work as well as Gruner’s is driven by a constant questioning of the material – what can paint do, what are its capabilities, how can limitations be tested? Both artists are using classic materials one would usually use as a painter, but they use it in a different way than expected. Each work sets out a new task for the medium, a new challenge, taking the investigation and as a result the understanding of the medium further.

Both artists present different works of current work groups in the gallery room. Sami’s Cut Paintings and Gruner’s pillows (Lazy Paintings) both deal with gravity. Gravity is partly shaping the works and thus the space in and around it. The lazy paintings show the elastic quality of acrylic paint when it does not have a carrier and the cut paintings work the formable shape of a canvas once it does not have the support of a wooden frame anymore and create a new approach to Fontana’s Concetto Spaziales.

The works by Sami with the skin of paint attached to the canvas’s back as well as Gruner’s wall objects and casts of massage mats show that paint has it's own volume in space. Usually the viewer would perceive a painting as a flat, two-dimensional space, although it has its own volume in a three-dimensional space. Thus, the border between object and painting is blurred.

Julia Gruner, born 1984 in Lüdenscheid, Germany.
She lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Huseyin Sami, born in 1979 in London, UK.
He lives and works in Sydney, Australia.