Christian Bök
The Kazimir Effect
27.04.22 – 14.05.22
Christian Bök, the fabled author of Eunoia, has turned his attention to Art, taking inspiration from a simple, iconic square: Suprematist Composition: White on White by the artist Kazimir Malevich. Bök has written a series of sixteen, minimal poems, each one a kanji haiku, composed by juxtaposing two names for varied brands of ‘white,’ sold by the manufacturer British Paints. Bök has then used these brands of house paint to create both collaged maquettes and abstract paintings, all modelled upon the aesthetic precedent set by Kazimir Malevich himself — each artwork: a palimpsest of squares, becoming an icon for the poem that supplies their minimal palette. Bök has created a genre of simple, visual poetry, whose sequence evolves from the concrete, pastoral image of ‘Gentle wind/ on Tokyo snow’ to the abstract, supernal motif of ‘Infinity white/ on infinity white.’ The exhibition consists of three parts: first, a grid of sixteen placards (each one a white square, depicting a kanji haiku, consisting of four glyphs, derived from the paired brands of paint); second, a grid of sixteen collages (each one a miniature variation of the painting by Malevich, juxtaposing two paint cards from a paintshop); third, a grid of sixteen canvases (each one a white square, depicting the image from the collage, painted with the paired brands of paint). The exhibition celebrates the artful rigour in the heritage of an intrepid painting by a modern artist who has influenced a century of abstracted, conceptual art.
The artshow also features, by Christian Bök, a small group of monochromes, all white (including a set of white works on paper by the guest, Stuart Gluth, likewise inspired by Malevich).
