21 November – 20 December 2012
16-18 Berners Street, London W1T 3LN
Open Tuesday – Saturday 10am-6pmor by appointment
Alison Jacques gallery in Fitzrovia is currently showing a very nice group of new works by German artist, Bernd Ribbeck. Influenced by a history of modernist abstraction and architecture where rationalism and spiritualism merge to create the signs and surfaces of contesting ideologies, the works are small-scale paintings in acrylic with permanent marker pen on MDF. Ribbeck’s imagery combines interlocking diamonds and squares, vaulting arches and circles, in vivid oranges and reds, blues and black built up in layers then scratched back. The influence of Swedish painter and occultist Hilma Af Klimt, an early pioneer of abstraction, is evident in composition and format, and is combined with an interest in the architecture of Dominikus Böhm, who sought to find a language to express the irrationality of religious belief through the rationalist language of modernism in mid-twentieth century Germany. Ribbeck’s practice is borne out of a fascination with articulating the visual structures of the spiritual and of referencing its history in twentieth century abstraction, blending metaphysical and modern languages to create exquisite works of geometric harmony.