Monte Clark

June 14 to July 14, 2012

Holger Kalberg’s new exhibition explores the legacies of modernism, offering critical and reflective works within the intersecting conceptual fields of abstraction, non-figurative, and concrete art.

The paintings and sculptures are a combination of new and transformed versions of earlier works. They avoid both purely geometric abstraction as well as representational imagery. Each piece is edited and layered, referring to the process of production and the compulsive act of making and therefore responding to one of the paradigms of modernism: the self-referencing of its materiality. The paintings and objects result from a dialogue with the material that is defined by an awareness of the history of its application.

Kalberg has incorporated sculpture and installation into the exhibition to create an environment of separate objects which refers to a moment in history; not a melancholic looking back, but rather an evaluation and questioning of strategies, an observation of a moment in time. It is more about the production, the hand, studio and the idea of creating an object causing a response. The different works in the space set up a dialogue, questioning the notion of originality, the studio, and the object. The broadening of the lexicon from painting and collage to sculpture and installation reflects Kalberg’s increasing interest into the notion of the role of the artist, individuality, and the studio practice.

Holger Kalberg was born in Germany and currently lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Kalberg studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Architecture and Design, Vancouver (BFA 2001) and the Chelsea School of Art, London, UK (MFA 2007). His work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario.