Ian Tweedy
« It’s only a matter of time »
Curated by
Marco Scotini
8 November – 29 December 2007
Press release
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Ian Tweedy
Interviewed by Marco Scotini
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Studio Dabbeni presents the first large personal exhibition on the American artist Ian Tweedy curated by Marco Scotini.
“It’s only a matter of time”- the title of the exhibition – goes directly to the heart of the research into personal memory and social history that underpins all Ian Tweedy’s painted work. We may not know where or when but we do know that something is inevitably about to happen, or has perhaps already irreparably happened. Something imminent looms threateningly over every moment in history. It is only a matter of time.
Like a sort of History hacker, Ian Tweedy keeps inventing his own “time machines”; crossovers through spaces and events, series of cut-up geographical and identity associations. An explorer of the memory and archivist of the present, Ian Tweedy produces ambiguously dated and fragmentary tales via the optional and non-linear assembly of images drawn from photographs of war, politics, architecture and everyday life. The synchronic juxtaposition of paintings, documentary photographs and drawings belonging to different times and places is open to a variety of potential interpretations that are left as such for the observer.
His biography of a person with no roots, an American born on a military base in Germany who then moved from one camp to another on foreign soil, is merely a shred of a broader social history that now brings us all together on a global scale. It is no coincidence that the archive of b/w photographs that forms the basis of all his projects is a stopgap for the lack of direct experience in his own history.
A former graffiti artist and now a “muralist” on large surfaces, Tweedy’s figurative repertoire may be made up of pictures of collective life and political events taken from newspapers and glossy magazines of the Fifties and Sixties, but he also uses documents from the past and the canvas covers of old books, so that every surface he works on represents a memory and has a story. In Tweedy, repetition becomes a way of giving fresh life to what has already happened.
The “It’s only a matter of time” exhibition at the Studio Dabbeni starts with a wall painting that can be seen through the gallery window. It is a monochrome-red portrayal of a landscape of piles of debris and rubble, a sort of anonymous Ground Zero that belongs to a time in the past and an unidentifiable geographical zone.
Monument #4
2007
Wall Drawing
Arrangements
of
Forgotten Stories # 7
2007
cm 18,7 x 12,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 8
2006
cm 13,5 x 22,4
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 9
2006
cm 20,3 x 13
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 10
2007
cm 21,4 x 14,6
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 12
2006
cm 19,2 x 12,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 13
2005
cm 18,5 x 12,3
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 14
2006
cm 20,8 x 13,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 15
2007
cm 19,5 x 14
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 16
2007
cm 12 x 18,6
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 17
2006
cm 14,4 x 20,7
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 18
2007
cm 13 x 20,2
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 19
2006
cm 16 x 24,2
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 20
2007
cm 12 x 18,7
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 21
2007
cm 19,5 x 12,3
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 22
2007
cm 12 x 20,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 23
2005
cm 18,7 x 11,8
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 24
2007
cm 16,3 x 24,3
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 25
2006
cm 16 x 24,2
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 26
2007
cm 19,2 x 12,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 27
2007
cm 19,5 x 13,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 28
2005
cm 19,5 x 13,8
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 29
2007
cm 24,8 x 17
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 30
2007
cm 25,2 x 18,6
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 31
2007
cm 28,8 x 20,3
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 32
2007
cm 18,7 x 12,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 33
2006
cm 20,7 x 14,2
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 34
2006
cm 20,8 x 14
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 35
2006
cm 19,5 x 12,5
Oil on cover
Arrangements of
Forgotten Stories # 36
2007
cm 20,9 x 15,2
Oil on cover
Inside, a sequence of five large drawings reconstructs the stages of first aid being given at the scene of an accident or some other emergency, as in a standard manual from another time. The image portraying two life-size men is repeated as the patient gradually rises from a prone position to his feet. The title 5 Steps (possibilities for a Monument) plays intentionally on the ambiguity between reactivation and memory. The exhibition ends with a large series of painted old canvas book-covers.
5 Steps
(Possibilities for a Monument)
2007
Tempera and pastels on paper
cm 124 x 248
cm 145 x 134,5
cm 178 x 135
cm 146,5 x 152,5
cm 194,5 x 106
Possibilities for a Monument
2007
cm 100 x 70
Mixed technique on paper
Opening
Thursday 8 november - 18.00
Duration
8 November – 29 December 2007
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Friday
09.30 - 12.00 14.30 - 18.30
Saturday
09.30 - 12.00 14.30 - 17.00
Sunday/Monday Closed
