Great Britizens

, Karen Tang

S.T.O.R.A.G.E, Are Blytt

9 APRIL- 16 MAY 2009

Great Britizens

by Karen Tang

The Agency is pleased to present a new series of sculptures by Karen Tang. Working with materials that include welded steel, coloured grout and fibreglass she has completed a series of fluid figurative sculptural pieces, with a knowing nod to Art Brut, the intelligent and also very playful shapes of works by Dubuffet and Niki de St Phalle. Tang's subject matter, however, is British urban grit with her portrayals of city dwellers, more the underbelly than a general cut through society. The first of these works, Pramface was a satirical take on a stereotypical urban underage mum with attitude, whilst also functioning as an abstracted pram and also not forgetting the funny and surreal aspect of the quasi - portrait. Very London in a Catherine Tate kind of way, it finds humour within social critique.

Further "Britizens" have joined the cast of her forthcoming exhibition. There is Callaloo Stu , taking his name from the Jamaican Stew made from the spinach- like Caribbean vegetable. Stu is an independent and fierce character. A dead ringer for Popeye the sculpture is comical with its testosterone fuelled posturing. It is also an amazingly subversive abstracted piece, which undermines formalist and racial stereotypes through finely tuned references. Tang carries on her examination of 20 th century formalist concerns whilst bringing her work into the 21 st century with references to celebrity worship, drug culture, paedophilia and club counterculture thrown into the equation. Her approach is both profoundly indebted to modernism in formal terms as well as truly contemporary with its psychological fragmentation, a mirror of today's complex social framework. It is the psychological aspect of her work that pushes it more towards the surreal. Mr Whippy 200 Yards From The Schoolgates is a giant ice cream cone literally coming to get you. With long arms waving and a suspiciously ordinary brown satchel he becomes the stuff nightmares are made of. A cross between a schoolmaster and a giant sweet at eight foot tall he makes everyone feel small and vulnerable like a child, a repulsive threat, which manages to be funny at the same time.

Siren Stephen and His Mirror is a rather skeletal mermaid with a giant mirror instead of her fishtail and sweeping long hair. Identified as male in the title the piece is a pun on gay vanity on the dance floor, an exquisitely surreal piece of work, which highlights Tangs unique sculptural language. The anti--portraiture continues in the work Miss SkegVegas , a stab at Skegness being the cheap seaside gambling arcade minus the glamour. A female character complete with giant scrunchie, bad girly makeup and giant earrings the sculpture juxtaposes the garishness of the ladette or wannabe WAG with the grace of a finely balanced sculpture and assured play with colour. Whilst conveying the carcrash couture accurately Tang also manages to include stylistic references to pop art and modernist sculpture. Completing this host of eccentric and lovingly exaggerated characters is the Crone of the Night , a haughty, operatic figure. Giacometti-like she stands on the thinnest supports which end in crow's feet. Rather than being flesh and blood she is hollow, a stylish mess of black artful hair and deep purple, dripping with jewellery on her insides.

The work has to be seen to experience the fine balance of satire and elegance Tang's work conveys. The pieces are intriguing, very close to a truthful portrayal of society and yet irreverent, imbued with a camp and overraught humour and an overriding sense of humanity (on the edge)

Karen Tang, born 1978, lives and works in London. Tang has shown widely including recently in projects at the Jerwood Foundation and the South London Gallery as well as completing a public sculpture commission for the Economist Plaza. She was included in the group show l'après moderne at Projet Midi, Brussels and was mentioned by Sam Steverlynck In December's Art Review magazine. Her drawing Mush_Room is currently on view in the exhibition Testcard curated by Charles Danby and George Unsworth for www.projeckt.org.uk.

Why Count Flowers At The End Of The Day ? by

Are Blytt

The Agency is pleased to present the young Norwegian artist Are Blytt. His practice is primarily painterly although he works with sculptures and multimedia installations as well. Blytt's interest lies in incidental modes of communication, which he represents in an illustrative and dispassionate manner. He will present a series of new canvases and small floor based works for S.T.O.R.A.G.E.

Re-appropriating the language of advertising is a thing of the Eighties and pure Post-Modernism. With an Eighties revival afoot in fashion perhaps its no coincidence that young art is looking at the subliminal message in signage again. In Blytt's work signs, logos letters and numbers are taken as language but rather than subverting the message of advertising with art, Blytt's work enlarges the irrelevant message of the everyday to the scale of advertising. His illustrations are more often than not accidental notes, handscrawled rather than typefaced, personal rather than of wider public relevance. Typography is clearly also of some excitement, but it is utilized like it comes from a heap of personal collectibles, bills from coin-operated launderettes, ticket stubs, curious notes in foreign languages and personal calculations...

Derrida interprets such written marks as part of language albeit with de-contextualised meanings, so Blytt is legitimized in taking them even further out of context and celebrating them as a sign/ signature/signifier in themselves. They are perplexing in that we do not understand the context they come from nor can we easily find a new one for them and, yet, they entice us to engage due to a universal familiarity. Making notes or random marks Is a universal activity and functional abbreviations such as CC are used by all daily on computers without being given much thought. By presenting them large and especially aesthesticised they are elevated from mere functionality to a poetic superstatus. Blytt's work is surely abstract although everything he represents is literally what it is, just remade from memory. Perhaps, since we do not pay any sort of attention to mundane items such as scribbled notes, we overlook their relevance to language and communication as a whole. Blytt on the other hand is an avid collector of the mundane and thereby creates a sort of gap language of inter-meanings and curious little messages.

Are Blytt, born 1981, lives and works in Oslo. A recent graduate of the university of Trondheim, he has participated in a number of shows in Oslo, Seoul and Frankfurt.