Irvine Contemporary and Warehouse Gallery Present:

Charbel Ackermann: "The New Geometry" and "Monument²"

Reception with the Artist, Friday June 2, 5-7 PM
Artist's Talk, Saturday June 3, 2 PM

In this off-site exhibition, Irvine Contemporary presents the installation work of internationally acclaimed, London-based artist Charbel Ackermann: "The New Geometry" and "Monument²". This exhibition is presented in collaboration with The Gallery at the Warehouse, Washington, DC.

In “The New Geometry”, Ackermann literalizes the "The Axis of Evil" metaphor from the 2002 State of the Union Address, and maps it onto multiple visual representations of the world. Using unaltered maps and satellite photographs, Ackermann re-presents the earth as if configured on this axis through a series of drawings, lithographs, mathematical calculations, and blackboard deductions, all reassembled for a culminating computer-projected presentation. One stunning image presents a straight line as from a 22,344km flight from Havana to Pyongyang, intersecting with Baghdad and Tehran, using satellite images obtained online through Google Earth. A realization of this project was also presented at The Drawing Center in New York (June-July, 2005).

“Monument²” ("Monument to Monuments," or "Monument Squared", created specially for our Washington exhibition, is a stunning mural drawing based on an ancient Roman triumphal arch. Ackermann’s Monument is a unique, interactive drawing: the monument is redrawn from thousands of original barcodes, each encoded with text fragments and Ackermann's own writing. Each barcode is programmed for a text message and is readable with handheld scanners which viewers can use to project texts in the inscription space of the arch. Constructed as a reflection on monuments and the cultural messages they encode for history, Ackermann creates a symbolic trajectory from the SPQR (The Senate and the People of Rome) inscribed on the Arch of Titus to Washington, D.C., the prime location of monuments in the U.S. and a city defined by architectural references to classical Rome.

Ackermann loads his barcodes with the philosophical, the impossible, the poignant, and the preposterous, leaving us delightfully reeling in the overlays of history and the meanings of monuments, and questioning if what we are reading is historical "truth" or cultural "fiction"-- or both.

New Print Edition for The New Geometry Project

For the Washington, DC exhibition of Ackermann’s “New Geometry”, Irvine Contemporary announces our first published print edition, consisting of Charbel Ackermann’s extraordinary hand-finished, limited edition lithographs. Ackermann has selected four of the “New Geometry” drawings to be recreated as four-color lithographs, each with hand-finished details, in editions of 10. The original prints will be on view at the Warehouse Gallery on 7th Street and at Irvine Contemporary on 14th Street during the exhibition.

Reception for the artist, Friday June 2, 5:00-7:00 at The Gallery at The Warehouse, 1017-21 7th Street NW, Washington DC. Artist's talk and afternoon reception, Saturday, June 3rd, 2:00-4:00 pm also at The Gallery at the Warehouse.

Special thanks to Molly and Paul Ruppert of the Warehouse for their collaboration on this project.