Jacob Barnes, founding director of Grove Globaland ‘non-art fair’ Minor Attractions, as well as the founding editor of Curatorial Affairs has launched new art space Season 4 Episode 6 with an Andrew Birk (a self-described “post-internet painter’s painter) exhibition Jumping Off A Mountain Sideways .
Install view, Andrew Birk, Jumping Off a Mountain Sideways at Season 4 Episode 6 Courtesy the artist and gallery
This is not just another artist-run art space,
says Barnes.
This is a fundamentally political project that laughs at the very people it involves, making space for true vulnerability, and thus, reckoning with the artifice of the art we claim to work in service of.
Install view, Andrew Birk, Jumping Off a Mountain Sideways at Season 4 Episode 6 Courtesy the artist and gallery
Andrew Birk, a self-described “post-internet painter’s painter,” has exhibited work in 27 countries. Jumping Off A Mountain Sideways was born out of Birk’s practice of recording himself in the fields surrounding his house in Espinavessa, Spain, spinning as fast as he could until he fell over. Often, the action was performed in stolen moments carved out of his responsibilities as a husband, father, and curator. It is a gesture of both defiance and submission; frustration and acceptance; action and futility; hope and anguish. In a series of paintings created while spinning, Birk invites chaos into an otherwise placid medium, aiming to move the stomach before the mind.
Install view, Andrew Birk, Jumping Off a Mountain Sideways at Season 4 Episode 6 Courtesy the artist and gallery
Andrew’s work finds its strength in its openness to be unresolved; every work and gesture can be read in a variety of ways, ways that are at times contradictory. In this sense, Andrew cuts to the bone of what it means to be human.
Jacob Barnes
Install view, Andrew Birk, Jumping Off a Mountain Sideways at Season 4 Episode 6 Courtesy the artist and gallery
Andrew Birk, Jumping Off a Mountain Sideways – 28th August 2024, Season 4 Episode 6 96 Robert St., NW1 3QP, London, UK; Contact: jpb@grove.biz
About the artist
Andrew approaches painting as a multi-faceted contemporary medium, where materials – always common and accessible in other facets outside of art – are used in an indivisible relationship with the subject matter. Each of his consecutive bodies of work are conceived as specific projects, with their own distinctive logic about context, gesture, and matter. Ranging from the observation of the apparent inconsequential moments of quotidian life, to an exploration of untrained aesthetics, from an almost archival look at urban and digital imagery, to the perception of the body moving through space and the imprint of nature on it. He has recently purchased a chainsaw, and is using it to both clear timber, and prepare new works.
Andrew has exhibited in 27 countries, including solo and group shows in Paris, Berlin, London, New York, Lisbon, Vienna, and widely in Mexico. Recent presentations include Para Mi Hija, Galeria Karen Huber, Mexico City (2020), Ebullicion, Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna (2019), Unsupported Message Format, Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris (2019), Dwelling Poetically: Mexico City, A Case Study, Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2018), A Finger Pointing to the Moon, SORT, Vienna (2018), I Am The Body Of A Human, Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta (2017), Callejero, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City (2016), and TRU AF, Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York City (2015).
Andrew is currently focused on taking care of his baby daughters (4 & 2) and rebuilding an old stone house in the Catalan countryside. His work has been reviewed in publications such as Parnass, Proceso, Reforma, Economista, Terremoto, Flash Art, Artspace, OFLUXO, Tzvetnik, Art Viewer, AQNB, Aujourd’Hui, Vice, I-D, and Huffington Post, among others.
Andrew co-directs Spiritvessel, a hybrid vehicle for contemporary art in Espinavessa, Spain.
Sporting Goods, No Place Like Home features a new body of work focusing on ghostly, drawn PLA sculptures while being accompanied by new large-format sculpture, performance, film, and sound work
