Florian and Michael Quistrebert, CHRYS, oil on canvas, 12 cm x 20 cm, 2009
Recently, the artists Michelle Rosenberg, Ralf Ziervogel and the collaborative team Florian and Michael Quistebert gave me the delightful opportunity to check in with them and discuss their work as they near the halfway point of their six month Triangle residency program.
My lively discussion with Michelle reinforced the range of creative possibilities that she is currently exploring. I was earlier introduced to her work in April at Parkers Box Gallery and immediately struck by her imaginative, whistle-board piece made from simple building materials. Minimal but playful, the piece typifies the common elements upon interactivity, participation and community that underlay her various projects. Michelle is using her current studio time to pursue further her sound board projects and to make installation objects from found wood architectural elements that are attached to plastic tubing. The 16” x 16” floor scraps mounted to the wall as well as the meandering sculptural floor piece made from architectural decorative elements speak to her new challenge: how to embed oneself into the physical space through both sound and metaphorical references to built structures. These works-in-progress are being used to resolve issues for larger scale, more public-oriented installations.
After my visit with Michelle, the next engaging half hour was spent with Ralf Ziervogel whose work revolves around exploring the power of visual culture and our increasing reliance upon mass media as a source for defining ourselves. Ralf’s drawings, installations, videos and other mixed media works stem as much from the Minimalist and Conceptual visual tactics of El Lissitsky, Hanne Darboven and Blinky Palermo as from popular culture icons such as Michael Jackson. His recent set of drawings explore the hypnotic effect of underlying systems but mostly the artist’s various projects concentrate upon how we increasingly compare and construct notions of ourselves through highly sexualized and fictitious narratives generated by marketing, fashion, film and other mass media forms of entertainment. Throughout, Ralf is interested in exploding to what he refers as “information bombs” or, as he explains, how communication and technological systems generate clichés of identity.
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