Situation of the Error, playpaint and Mari Reijnders

About

Two artists whose work apparently bears no relation to each other – is friendship or a shared worldview sufficient to hang an exhibition of paintings upon? Mari Reijnders and Mike Gittings of playpaint have a long-standing friendship and have discussed and debated long before presenting this parallelist collaboration.

Central to the exhibition is the work of Andrei Cădere (Warsaw, 1938 – Paris, 1979). Although ‘central’ is a word which contradicts the core of his practice (which is nothing if not oblique). A Polish born Romanian conceptualist whose work radically re-imagined the boundaries of authorship and objecthood. His last works in the 1970′s an extended ‘manifestation’ in a Paris already in thrall to them.

Both artists cite his persistent interventions and hermetic methods as inspiration. (The title of the show is itself a re-translation of a phrase in Cădere’s rare writings (he only published three texts in his life Presentation of a work. Use of a work (1974), and History of a work (1982) - this exhibition is an imagined third - The Situation of the Error). Cădere most famously interposed his art (sticks coloured according to a system known only to himself) into existing exhibitions and galleries entirely uninvited, calling into question the status of the work and the parameters of each site and exhibition space.

Reijnders and playpaint’s work sets out with no obvious agenda - 'paused paintings, decomposed paintings and on-off paintings converge'. One is solidly abstract the other broadly, almost whimsically figurative - but these are not opposites - there is another triangulation - the world these artists inhabit, whether the world observed or created on canvas, and the further mirrored site of viewer and viewing point. The intruder is the audience, the interpreter takes precedence and the translation is uniquely theirs. The seeming contradiction between these artists’ practice is part of the re-ordering that we as audience must place ourselves within, unbidden.Their playfulness must be taken seriously.

Thank you for your intrusion in this matter.