Self-Effaced: Ruth Claxton, Dave Miko, Geerten Verheus

About

f a projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by three artists whose practice is connected by their interest in the annihilation of the figurative image. Working in sculpture, collage and painting, Ruth Claxton, Dave Miko and Geerten Verheus all use strategies of effacement, erasure, substitution and collage to challenge the presence of the figure in their work. The works in the show all exist in some relation to the slipping point between abstraction and figuration.

Ruth Claxton's sculptures using commercial decorative figurines, adapted and mutated in acts of saccharine violence, have been widely shown in the UK and in Europe. Born in the UK, she trained at Nottingham Trent University and at the Royal College of Art (MA Sculpture). Solo shows include The Collective, Edinburgh (2006), Arquebuse Gallery, Geneva (2007), and I Thought I Was The Audience… touring exhibition, Colchester and Cambridge (2004). In 2008 ' 9 she will have solo exhibitions at the IKON gallery and Spike Island, Bristol. She was included in XS at f a projects in 2004.

Dave Miko paints in oil on aluminium. His paintings, often small in scale, depict narrative scenes which oscillate between abstraction and figuration. At times the two languages are simultaneously present, his compositions drawing on the techniques of collage to embody a slippage of content and meaning. His figures often seem fragile, the efflorescent joy of their abstract ground threatens to engulf and erase them. Born in Connecticut, Miko trained at SUNY and Yale. Solo exhibitions include Wallspace Gallery, New York and Arquebuse, Geneva. Group exhibitions include the 826NYC Artshow at David Zwirner (2006) and Romantic Detachment at PS1 (2004)

Geerten Verheus' collages are intricate and painstaking assemblages of found images cut from newspapers and magazines. They too are structured around the slippage of signs ' images and objects which rhyme formally, but which in terms of content or function are radically jarring. At their most extreme they can depict just the links of a wire fence, a representational motif which, taken to its extreme, becomes purely abstract, or a constellation of gun-shot holes in a wall, each individually cut and re-assembled like a map of the constellations of the stars. Verheus, born in the Netherlands, now lives in Berlin. He trained at the Rietveld Academy and at Chelsea College of Art, London. Recent solo exhibitions include COMA, Berlin, and Villa de Bank, Enschede. He was also included in Collage, The Bloomberg Space (2004), Elsewhere (with Arjan van Helmond and Tjebbe Beekman), f a projects (2004), Flutter, The Approach (2006), FLIP, Chung King Project, Los Angeles (2006) and Happiness, Gagosian Gallery Berlin, 2006.