Zora Mann
Open-Field-Test
(Outdoor)
17 September – 11 October 2014
Chert gallery is pleased to announce a new outdoor project, inviting British artist Zora Mann (born 1979, lives and works in Berlin) to present her work in the vitrines around the courtyard. The exhibition, titled Open-Field-Test, reflects on the extemporaneous and precarious placement of the artworks in an outdoor context and a new environment.
Mann’s works on paper and colourful oil and acrylic paintings on wood or canvas depict primordial forms and imaginary scenarios somewhere between abstraction and geometry. With visible tribal influences, they portray obscure realities and dream interpretations.
Her etchings are the most detailed and enigmatic of her various production (which also includes lino prints and watercolors on paper). The graduation of black and white forces the viewer to focus on the detail within the drawings and discover the many peculiarities in the narration, leading to subconscious and utopian scenarios.
Her parents being of East African descent, tribal art comes instinctively from a natural fascination towards it. Tribal art is often ceremonial in nature and has a concrete purpose that goes further than simply functioning as an object for contemplation. This aspect is a focus in Mann’s work: her folkloristic surfaces challenge what is commonly described as decorative art. The artist’s practice focuses on art’s capacity to represent paradoxes and conflicting messages in the same object or surface.