Lisson Gallery

Florian Pumhösl

London, 6 February – 15 March 2008

Florian Pumhösl

Lisson Gallery is proud to present Florian Pumhösl’s first solo exhibition in London, in collaboration with Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne.

The exhibition includes Pumhösl’s latest 16mm film, OA 1979-3-5-036, new paintings on glass and wall vitrines presenting historical books. The works are representative of Pumhösl’s concern with destabilising a codified relationship to the language of abstraction. The artist uses both his own work and historical elements in carefully assembled exhibition displays, hence inscribing a new context into pre-existing material.

OA 1979-3-5-036 is the conversion of a Japanese book by Take Hiratsugi from the late 17th century into a 16mm animated film. The book is called Gozen Hiinagata (Dress Patterns for Noble Ladies), one of a multi-volume pattern catalogue with examples of the earliest Japanese kimono designs. Little is known about Take Hiratsugi, the author of what can be called a popular publication, except that he himself was in the kimono trade. The motifs shown in the book’s woodcuts generally consist only of outlines designed to make it easy for the purchaser to copy the pattern. In Florian Pumhösl’s film these patterns are selected, simplified and rearranged, in order to ultimately arrive at a typology of fragments of the graphic elements that are depicted in the book in abstracted fashion – originally floral and landscape images, everyday objects and architectural details. For this purpose, the book is first turned 90 degrees and then transferred in negative onto a timeline. The cuts in the film stand for turning the book’s pages.. OA 1979-3-5-036 (the title indicates the ordinal number of the book – a gift from art historian Jack Hillier – in the British Museum registry) can be regarded as documenting an artistic experiment focusing on selective perception of a form, which involves remembering and classifying the forms in a catalogue.

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Works on view

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Location

52 Bell Street
London

Opening Times:
Monday – Friday: 10:00am – 6:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am – 5:00pm

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