Informel Logic
"Nothing is static. Wherever we look, traces of erstwhile existences can be found. Nothing is too far or near, too large or small, for the untiring, inquiring mind of Wolfgang Ganter. His artistic spectrum stretches from the smallest cells to the boundless universe." — Birgit Möckel
Eli Ridgway Gallery is pleased to present Informel Logic by artist Wolfgang Ganter — a new series of large-scale, photogenic prints synthesized from 35mm slides. Through varied applications of organic compounds, the slide emulsion is manipulated to create photographs cognizant of their ephemeral nature. The investigation into simultaneously generative and disintegrating images was inspired by notions of accumulation, erosion and the abject as encountered by the artist's numerous trips to bulk waste collection sites. There he discovered the debris of daily life in the form of images: thousands of 35mm slides that people had put on the street for disposal. These images played both literal and conceptual witness to the process of organic growth and evolution. The changes that affected the surface of the slides lead to contingent outcomes, inspiring an entire body of work concerned with an amalgam of methodological processes. The results in Informel Logic are manifold, presenting ever-new correspondences between an organic "work-in-progress" and contemporary fabrication.
The alliance between the old image and the new painterly effect creates an experimental aesthetic, evoking both fantastic narratives full of allusive sub-texts and deferring the condition of the medium onto a new level of self-reflexivity. Ganter's process of microscopic magnification leaves behind hyper-real presentations of mutable photographic images. The title of the exhibition references Art Informel, the 1950s French counterpart to Abstract Expressionism which prioritized indeterminate composition and structure.
Wolfgang Ganter has been artist in residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), and recently received awards from the Kunstfonds Scholarship, Kunststiftung Baden Württemberg and Bureau d'Artiste (Zürich). He has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions and is in the collections of Städische Museen Heilbronn, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Silvia und Helmut Wickleder Stiftung Schloss Leinzell, and Museum für aktuelle Kunst, Durbach. Informel Logic is Ganter's second solo showing at the gallery. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
