asprey jacques


Ian Kiaer september 21 - november 3 2001	view work from current exhibition

asprey jacques is pleased to present the first solo show of British artist Ian Kiaer which will largely comprise of work made in response to the artist's six month stay in Seoul earlier this year. Ian Kiaer's practice in the past has often involved choosing historically peculiar and possibly untenable subjects such as the Russian poet Irina Ratushinskayas relationship to Constructivism or the shared architectural preoccupations of the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte with 16th century painter Pieter Bruegel. In his recent visit to South Korea he has made work based on Yang Paeng Son, the 16th century Confucian scholar who lived and worked in exile for the majority of his life. Such themes have in common the artistic protagonist at odds with the ideologies of their times, their response being to put up aesthetic rather than political resistance (Ratushinskaya through her poetry or Malaparte and Yang Paeng Son through architecture). Kiaer's work groups models, paintings, drawings and found objects specific to his chosen themes. These arrangements present broken narratives whose individual motifs provoke particular moods or associations. Kiaers use of models is precise, a way of putting forward tentative thoughts in an abbreviated form with the potential to address historical and epic subjects. Ian Kiaer was born in 1971. He studied at the Slade School of Art (1995) and the Royal College of Art (2000) in London. He was selected by Francesco Bonami to exhibit in Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana (2000). Pier Luigi Tazzi (co-curator of Documenta X) invited him to show a new body of work this summer in An Empty Spot to Stay in Watou (Belgium). For further information please contact Caroline Hancock on 020 7287 7675 Gallery hours: tuesday to friday 106, saturday 101 Next exhibition: Robert Mapplethorpe, november-december