 11/29/05 Portikus im Leinwandhaus
Portikus in Frankfurt am Main is proud to present Gorgeousness & Gorgeosity, the first institutional Solo show in Germany of British artists Mark Leckey. In recent years, Leckey has become widely known for his atmospheric projection pieces and his audio sculptures. In his films and installations Leckey blends the worlds of popular culture and visual art into a uniquely riveting mix of sound and vision. As a member of the band donAteller and, more recently, of Jack too Jack, the artist has also played an active role in Londons music world. His 1999 video essay Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, which has been described as the most important video work of the 1990s, is a compilation of found footage from British dance floors of the 70s and 80s. A documentary of sorts, Leckey's video chronicles what British critic Matthew Higgs describes as the rites of passage experienced by successive generations of British (sub)urban youth. Typical of this work, and of Leckeys production in general, is a celebratory tone that doesnt exclude a melancholy sense of loss. Comparing Leckey to the Baudelairean flaneur, Higgs states in Artforum: Leckey's unhurried but measured production shares something of the sublime idleness so beloved by Balzac and Debord. Unlike most art that seeks to implicate itself in popular culture, Leckey's recent projects eschew ironic posturing in favour of a more reverential, loving tone. His art possesses a strange non-art-like quality, operating, as it does, on the knife's edge where art and life meet. Mark Leckey may indeed be the closest thing we have to Constantin Guys, Baudelaire's famed painter of modern life." At the Portikus, the artist presents two works involving moving imagery inside a special architectural environment: Made in Eaven, 2004 (16 mm, 3 min. loop), a film displaying a legendary sculptural work by Jeff Koons, and Drunken Bakers, 2005 (DVD, 55 min.), a piece about mental and physical deterioration of the two central characters of the work. For the latter work, which uses the imagery from a popular comic, the artist has produced a new soundtrack using his own voice as well as that of colleague Steve Claydon. Since 2005, Mark Leckey is professor of film at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.Represented by the galleries Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Gavin Browns enterprise, New York and Cabinet, London, he has exhibited extensively in Europe and the US, and his work can be found in several of the worlds most important museum collections, including Londons Tate Modern. After moving from its original address in the summer of 2003, the Portikus has produced more than twenty exhibitions in a flexible structure designed by artists Tobias Rehberger and Olafur Eliasson. Leckeys show is the last show at this venue. In the spring of 2006 the Portikus moves to a new building on a small island in the river Main. The exhibition has been supported by Deutsche Bank Stiftung |
