Mischa Kuball "Double Standard"
de Appel, Prinseneiland 7, Amsterdam
© Cary Markerink, Amsterdam
© Cary Markerink, Amsterdam
© Cary Markerink, Amsterdam
© Hubertus Birkner
'Mischa Kuball's art lies at an intersection of the contemporary and the traditional. His alertness to the integration of art and architecture is modern in the now practically classical twentieth century sense of the word; modern, too, is his use of immaterial visual means such as light projection that refer to constructivism; but his use of the geometric shapes from the Bauhaus courses is consciously 'traditional'. What makes Kuball's work so current is the way it reveals the conflict between the uncluttered, utopian vision of artists at the turn of the present century and the complex reality with which we now find ourselves confronted. By fusing his abstract-geometric projections with the transformed boundaries of the world map, Kuball casts these shapes in the role of archaic idealizations, unconnected with the political realities reaching us every day through the news media. The project, which Kuball titles Double Standard, comprises both single and multiple series of projected images. The complexity reaches its maximum in a number of photographic works which he places opposite to windows, so consciously integrating them with reflected images of the outside world: in these works, images derived from continental borders are screened on to photographs of interiors. The outlines are rotated and doubled making them reminiscent of the butterfly shapes of the Rohrschach test. The intention is perhaps not so much to help unravel the spectator's deepest emotions, as to incite him to reflect on the following question: how is it that works of art, which like brains can store multiple layers of possible meaning, can deconstruct our habitual patterns of association?' (Invitation text by Saskia Bos)
Catalogue: Mischa Kuball. Double Standard, 1993. Text: Noemi Smolik. Dutch & English. Bio- & bibliography included. 32 Pages: 9 f.c., 15 b.w., 17.4 x 24.4 cm. Softcover. Design: Irma Boom. ISBN 90 73501 18 0. SOLD OUT
