Ambiguous Gestures
2004 - Installation (Installation)
Felix Gmelin
Ambiguous Gestures takes as its point of origin a film Gmelin discovered in his father’s archive. Filmed from a fixed point, it portrays his father in an intimate performance of body painting with a woman unknown to Felix Gmelin. The discovery of this footage was obviously disturbing. On the one hand there is an erotic encounter with someone who is not Gmelin’s mother; on the other hand the performance itself is strangely unerotic and unsensual. The performance clearly references the work of Klein and the Viennese actionists but has an Arcadian element divorced from the Viennese school. Two acts of painting take place; the mutual painting of bodies and the impression of those bodies on a series of canvases. Taking that as his own starting point, working from stills Felix Gmelin then painted his own paintings with the help also of an assistant, thus paralleling the process of his father. He wanted to focus on the painting aspect of the film rather than its erotic potential and draw a comparison between painting and film, further enhanced by the display of stills that forms part of the installation. The grisâtre quality of the paintings serves to highlight the intense colour of the film. By making what in some respects are conventional paintings from this most intimate of films, and painting found images, Gmelin neutralises its erotic charge, making the film ‘innocent, beautiful and affirmative’. While the film is ‘embarrassing in every possible sense’ to the artist, its conjunction with his paintings and the stills transforms it into another manifestation of a utopian project. Gmelin cleanses his father ‘s work literally and metaphorically, washing the film and creating paintings using rubber gloves and brushes.
With a degree in painting and inspired by so-called institutional criticism, Felix Gmelin is interested in the possibilities of painting as a form of resistance and its direct relation to a form of socio-political reality. He is frequently known to rework the experiences of his youth into his art. In a critical, yet personal investigation, he subtly unravels the complicated interweaving of self-development, socialization and emancipation with which he grew up in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gmelin’s first substantial work in which reproduction served as a productive impetus was Art Vandals (1996-1998), a series of 12 paintings and one object, modeled after examples of modern and contemporary artworks, all of which had been vandalized. His interest in degenerate art also falls within the interest of vandalism. The emptying of meaning is a consistent theme in his work, as a number of Gmelin’s paintings. Felix Gmelin was born in Heidelberg in 1962 and has lived in Stockholm, Sweden, since he was nine.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » CONTEMPORARYAND
C& Magazine’s Highlights of 2023 You Might Want to Read Again | Contemporary And search for something search C& AMÉRICA LATINA EN FR MEMBERSHIP EN FR Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK Follow About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership Contemporary And (C&) is funded by: Editorial All Editorial Features Installation Views Inside the Library Interviews News Opinions Events All Events Art Fairs Conferences Exhibitions Festivals Performances Screenings Talks / Workshops C& Projects C& Artists’ Editions C& Commissions C& Center of Unfinished Business Show me your shelves! C& Education Mentoring Program Critical Writing Workshops Lectures / Seminars Membership Opportunities Print C& Audio Archive On Tour Places Explore IN CONVERSATION INSTALLATION VIEW WE GOT ISSUES DETOX LABORATORY OF SOLIDARITY CONSCIOUS CODES CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS LOVE ACTUALLY OVER THE RADAR BLACK CULTURES MATTER INSIDE THE LIBRARY LOOKING BACK GO TO C& AMÉRICA LATINA About Contact Newsletter Advertise Imprint Data protection Membership Best of 2023 C& Magazine’s Highlights of 2023 You Might Want to Read Again From climate colonialism to new perspectives from queer artists in Mozambique, these are some of our most-read articles this year...
© » KADIST
Marc Nagtzaam
2014Nagtzaam’s medium is drawing and his repertory of forms varies from abstract hard-edge and wall drawing to the reproduction of written material that he collects from art magazines...
© » KADIST
Fernanda Gomes
2013For this floor based work, Gomes has taken two lengths of bamboo and tied them together using linen thread...
© » KADIST
Until It Makes Sense October 15 – December 11, 2011 With: Saâdane Afif – Yto Barrada – Matti Braun – Matthew Buckingham – Peter Friedl – Mario Garcia Torres – Pratchaya Phinthong – Walid Raad Curator: Jean-Marc Prevost The exhibition gathers an ensemble of works from the Kadist collection which remain open to suspensions and to shifts in meaning...
© » KADIST
Barry McGee
Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...
© » KADIST
Dale Harding
2018Dale Harding’s installation Body of Objects consists of eleven sculptural works that the artist based on imagery found at sandstone sites across Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland...
© » KADIST
Pedro Reyes
2005In Reyes’s words, “We should be able to extract the technological nutrients before we excrete our waste...
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Enlarged windows, glass bricks and balustrades allow light to flow through Hong Kong village home after renovation | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Architecture and design + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more When work was thin during the pandemic, an interior designer tapped her employees to overhaul her family’s three-storey villa with garden in Sai Kung, Hong Kong...
© » KADIST
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
2005The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...
© » ARTFORUM
Expo Chicago Announces Participants for 2024 Edition – Artforum Read Next: RUTH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS NAMES WINNERS OF INAUGURAL $100,000 RUTH AWARDS Subscribe Search Icon Search Icon Search for: Search Icon Search for: Follow Us facebook twitter instagram youtube Alerts & Newsletters Email address to subscribe to newsletter...