BERND RIBBECK
February 24 to April 13, 2024
° ° ° ° °
At an exhibition curated by Mies van der Rohe at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in 1927, Bruno Taut, the leader of the secret society Die Gläserne Kette and one of the guest architects, designed a pavilion with multicoloured external walls and ceiling. Naturally, this riot of colours attracted broad disapproval, in particular from the architect of the adjoining pavilion, who was none other than Mies himself. The colours were reflected excessively on the orthodox façade of the modernist’s work, who expressed first his reservations and soon his anger. Taut responded to the attacks, saying: “If my project is not in accord with the others, that’s a fairly good sign, it doesn’t mean that the colours have been poorly used, simply that the neighbouring pavilions simply haven’t been finished.”
Nearly one hundred years later, Bernd Ribbeck’s small untitled paintings of the progression of a multicoloured geometric motif, representing a greatly simplified architectural feature flirting with abstraction and repeated right across the composition, seem to be a reiteration of that ancient squabble. However, it was neither Mies’ rationalist designs, nor Taut’s spiritualist utopias, that inspired Ribbeck’s series, but a French Brutalist project, Les Étoiles, constructed in Ivry-sur-Seine in the suburbs of Paris. Designed by the architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, this set of buildings was built between 1969 and 1975, and owes its name to the sharply pointed triangular segments of raw concrete that overhang the architectural structure and are suggestive of some of Taut’s drawings published in his extravagant City Crown project (1919). Discovered by Ribbeck during a residency in Paris in 2022, the monumental Brutalist lines were first transcribed by the artist in sketches on small sheets of Bristol paper, his preferred medium for his creative meanderings.
The lattice that runs through the cardboard rectangle facilitates the elaboration of the composition, with its iterative geometric pattern. Ribbeck’s sketch of the grey architecture was given more depth and colour when he superimposed MDF panels coated with several layers of differently coloured acrylic paint to resemble the tiered structure of the buildings in Ivry, then redrew the patterns in ballpoint pen, and then in marker pen, leaving the traces left by the biro on the surface of the painting. By creating a repetitive ornamental motif based on images of late Brutalist architecture, Bernd Ribbeck performs a paradoxical reversal: he transmits something of the history of modernism from what modernism banished. By reconciling these historical enemies – modernism and ornament – Ribbeck rekindles the ambivalence that is the very essence of modernism. Jacques Rancière theorised it in Aisthesis: modernism is riven with the contradiction between the autonomy of art and its suppression, between art separated from life and art fully engaged with life, to the point of becoming merged with it. Ribbeck’s series of paintings with motifs stemming from Brutalist architecture superlatively embodies this contradiction between modernism’s two structural components.
From the concrete geometry of Les Étoiles in Ivry-sur-Seine to the geometry of the paintings by Fra Angelico, visitors are asked to take only one step at the heart of the exhibition. Close to the paintings described, a paper cut-out is spread across the entire surface of a wall, as though to celebrate the ornamental scheme yet more. Once again, the wall is covered with architecture, created in isometric perspective, with equal importance given to the three dimensions of space. Here, using grey-painted paper with cut-outs, Ribbeck has created the motif of an arch inspired by the architectural frames used by Italian Renaissance artists to define the field of the image. It is repeated ad infinitum, in a remarkable relationship between spatial illusionism and decorative flatness. The same pattern is given a new existence, though in more modest format, in the five brightly coloured paintings that face the mural.
While the theosophical works of Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz have often been referenced in connection with Bernd Ribbeck’s production, it would be interesting to consider his work in the light
of Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons, or the paintings of the Pattern & Decoration group. In Ribbeck’s works, it is not the crystal that – like in J.G. Ballard’s novel The Crystal World (1966) – multiplies indefinitely, but the architectures in their desire to build A New City Crown.
Marjolaine Lévy
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in
BERND RIBBECK
February 24 to April 13, 2024
At an exhibition curated by Mies van der Rohe at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in 1927, Bruno Taut, the leader of the secret society Die Gläserne Kette and one of the guest architects, designed a pavilion with multicoloured external walls and ceiling. Naturally, this riot of colours attracted broad disapproval, in particular from the architect of the adjoining pavilion, who was none other than Mies himself. The colours were reflected excessively on the orthodox façade of the modernist’s work, who expressed first his reservations and soon his anger. Taut responded to the attacks, saying: “If my project is not in accord with the others, that’s a fairly good sign, it doesn’t mean that the colours have been poorly used, simply that the neighbouring pavilions simply haven’t been finished.”
Nearly one hundred years later, Bernd Ribbeck’s small untitled paintings of the progression of a multicoloured geometric motif, representing a greatly simplified architectural feature flirting with abstraction and repeated right across the composition, seem to be a reiteration of that ancient squabble. However, it was neither Mies’ rationalist designs, nor Taut’s spiritualist utopias, that inspired Ribbeck’s series, but a French Brutalist project, Les Étoiles, constructed in Ivry-sur-Seine in the suburbs of Paris. Designed by the architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, this set of buildings was built between 1969 and 1975, and owes its name to the sharply pointed triangular segments of raw concrete that overhang the architectural structure and are suggestive of some of Taut’s drawings published in his extravagant City Crown project (1919). Discovered by Ribbeck during a residency in Paris in 2022, the monumental Brutalist lines were first transcribed by the artist in sketches on small sheets of Bristol paper, his preferred medium for his creative meanderings.
The lattice that runs through the cardboard rectangle facilitates the elaboration of the composition, with its iterative geometric pattern. Ribbeck’s sketch of the grey architecture was given more depth and colour when he superimposed MDF panels coated with several layers of differently coloured acrylic paint to resemble the tiered structure of the buildings in Ivry, then redrew the patterns in ballpoint pen, and then in marker pen, leaving the traces left by the biro on the surface of the painting. By creating a repetitive ornamental motif based on images of late Brutalist architecture, Bernd Ribbeck performs a paradoxical reversal: he transmits something of the history of modernism from what modernism banished. By reconciling these historical enemies – modernism and ornament – Ribbeck rekindles the ambivalence that is the very essence of modernism. Jacques Rancière theorised it in Aisthesis: modernism is riven with the contradiction between the autonomy of art and its suppression, between art separated from life and art fully engaged with life, to the point of becoming merged with it. Ribbeck’s series of paintings with motifs stemming from Brutalist architecture superlatively embodies this contradiction between modernism’s two structural components.
From the concrete geometry of Les Étoiles in Ivry-sur-Seine to the geometry of the paintings by Fra Angelico, visitors are asked to take only one step at the heart of the exhibition. Close to the paintings described, a paper cut-out is spread across the entire surface of a wall, as though to celebrate the ornamental scheme yet more. Once again, the wall is covered with architecture, created in isometric perspective, with equal importance given to the three dimensions of space. Here, using grey-painted paper with cut-outs, Ribbeck has created the motif of an arch inspired by the architectural frames used by Italian Renaissance artists to define the field of the image. It is repeated ad infinitum, in a remarkable relationship between spatial illusionism and decorative flatness. The same pattern is given a new existence, though in more modest format, in the five brightly coloured paintings that face the mural.
While the theosophical works of Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz have often been referenced in connection with Bernd Ribbeck’s production, it would be interesting to consider his work in the light of Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons, or the paintings of the Pattern & Decoration group. In Ribbeck’s works, it is not the crystal that – like in J.G. Ballard’s novel The Crystal World (1966) – multiplies indefinitely, but the architectures in their desire to build A New City Crown.
Marjolaine Lévy
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in
Untitled, 2024
Acrylic on MDF
36 x 27 cm
14 1/8 x 10 5/8 in