In Silent Speed, an exhibition by Marco Breuer on view at Yossi Milo Gallery, in New York, free-flowing shapes loop in and out of photographic color works, along with Polaroid sequences, small collages, studies for double-pages, and a newsprint tabloid publication.
Marco Breuer’s shapes hover between silhouettes, logos, human form, and shadows. There is a palpable tension between figure and ground, a precarious balancing between negative and positive space. Motifs reoccur and transform as they move from one format to another. Breuer’s lines, both freehand and guided, trace movement and suggest incessant mutability. Lines build up to form planes that suggest volume before disintegrating back into lines. His visual language remains open-ended and lucid throughout. The work overall has a provisional quality; every manifestation is just one of many potential versions, an outtake in a sequence of possibilities. Two vitrines present some of these variants in a series of folders that function for Breuer as both preliminary sketches and debriefing exercises to reflect back on existing images.
As with much of Breuer’s work, the images in Silent Speed are the result of a negotiation between the tool, the hand, and the photographic materials employed. Shapes take form through a process of subtraction by which emulsion is physically removed to reveal the raw substrate of the paper. Rigorous and playful at the same time, these abstractions led Breuer to new work in front of the camera in which he positions himself in the shape of his abstractions. In these interpretations, we feel the forms in our own bodies as fluid, awkward, funny, and moving.
Marco Breuer, Silent Speed
Through October 29, 2016
245 10th Ave
New York, NY 10001
http://www.yossimilo.com/
