Americans and Apricots (through 30 April 2011 at Hilary Crisp Gallery)

The exhibition is loosely organized around the eighth and penultimate edition of Spirale Magazine, which functions less as specific historical precedent than as an indirect index of works that attempt to articulate complex practices with dramatically simple visual gestures. The abstract representation of language and the condensation of manifold ideas into restrained patterns or geometries unify the paintings, sculptures and design objects included in the exhibition. Americans and Apricots takes it title from Eugen Gomringer’s 1960 concrete poem.

Spirale was founded in Bern in 1953 by Dieter Roth, Marcel Wyss and Eugen Gomringer. The nine issues of Spirale printed between 1953 and 1960 brought together Concrete Art and Brazilian visual poetry into what would come to be known as the International Concrete Poetry Movement. The magazine—devoted to poetry, the plastic arts, graphics, architecture and industrial design— was characterized by a complete control of visual content, from the uniform design of every advertisement to the printing of each individual page.

Op Nu Lk by Alice Channer (1977 lives and works in London) uses a laser-printed fabric remnant from a 2009 Alexander McQueen pattern. Channer is interested in the speed of the laser print as it relates to the more mechanical production method of screen printing and the relation this has to commodification and her own position as a consumer-artist. Like the folded and condensed fabric, the title is also a compressed abbreviation of the hypothetical full title, ‘Op-Art New Look’. Channer’s second solo exhibition Body Conciousis currently on view at The Approach.

Paul Elliman‘s (1961 lives and works in London) piece for Americans and Apricots is an Hermes-style silk scarf based on the “watery grave” pattern on the background of a Sprite can. The silk twill imitates the can’s aluminum tonic sheen. Elliman’s work has addresses verbal and non-verbal forms of language, from conventional typography to the instrumentalisation of the human voice, the coded messages of emergency vehicle sirens radio transmissions and the muted acoustics of architectural space. Elliman has exhibited widely in venues such as Tate Modern, London, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, APAP in Anyang, South Korea, and Kunsthalle Basel.