PrintAnna Ostoya as part of a group exhibtiion Cornered Rooms
Anna Ostoya/ Saturday Afternoon, 1st of December, Leeds (2007)
3 September - 17 October,
Wed - Sat, 11am - 6 pm
Sun, 11am - 4pm
First Thur of every month 11am - 9pm (by appointment)
Waterside Projects Space
Unit 8, Waterside
44-48 Wharf Road
London N1 7UX
FREE
Placed within a 90º angle, one can either face in or face out. A corner can either cage or cradle. By bringing together ambitious installations, wall drawing and sculpture, Cornered Rooms examines whether this particular space of experience serves to reinforce our fears of entrapment, or whether it can create a positive space for reflection.
Post-9/11 architecture has highlighted the importance of exit strategies. Stephan Trüby discusses the advent of this new spatial orientation in Exit Architecture, Design Between War and Peace in a culture marked by risk-analysis and fear. Rather than welcoming ‘entry situations’, building codes show a desire for a way out.
The corner is responsible for the awkward feeling of walls caving in and the impossibility of escape. By placing this situation alongside contemporary architecture’s preoccupation with ‘exit situations’, the corner may serve as a metaphor for our social condition.
The two-dimensional arrangement of lines is collapsed and expanded into the gallery. The corners of the exhibition space appropriate the structures employed by the artworks. The exhibition will bring newly commissioned and previously unseen in the UK works by Hreinn Fridfinnsson (IS), Karim Noureldin (CH), Anna Ostoya (PL), Damien Roach (UK), Egill Sæbjörnsson (IS) and Patrick Tuttofuoco (IT). Exhibition curated by Annabelle von Girsewald.
Anna Ostoya is known for her politicised work which poses complexities of social problems such as war and economics. She analyses these issues from historical and psychoanalytical perspectives in relation to expressions of masculinity.
Saturday Afternoon, 1st of December, Leeds (2007) and A Sense of Perspective and Other Attempts (2008) is a sound sculpture, consisting of a domestic CD player and a triangle shaped table and an oil painting. The shapes present in both works point to the immediacy and confrontation Ostoya seeks to engage the viewer with. The audio element presents an extract of Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities whose multi-layered narration talks of the utopian possibilities of imagined communities. Ostoya leads us to consider how Calvino's words translate in 21st century global landscapes marked by isolation, anxiety, and promises of technological and economic progress.
More information at Waterside Project Space