Montreal, August 23, 2021 – From September 2 to October 2, the European collective KGB, formed by artists Kim Buck (Denmark), Tore Svensson (Sweden) and Karin Seufert (Germany), will be bringing its work to Montreal for a group exhibition at Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h. KGB is named after the first letters of the cities where each artist lives – København (Copenhagen), Gothenburg and Berlin – and has been exhibiting collectively since 2013. The first three exhibitions of the collective were presented in these three cities before crossing the borders of other countries in Europe, Asia and now America. Carrying their work from one place to another for almost ten years, the three artists, as mischievous as the name of their collective indicates, have fun thinking about the intrigue posed by the objects they carry, as if each item held the key to a secret code, or served to clandestinely conceal something else.
In the heart of Copenhagen, Kim Buck‘s studio has a gallery section, where the very first KGB exhibition was held in 2013. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally and is now part of prestigious collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Oslo, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Designmuseum Danmark, and the Danish Arts Foundation. He has received numerous awards for his work, both in Denmark and abroad. Kim Buck’s designs are not only the result of his training in jewellery making at the Guldsmedehøjskolen in Copenhagen, but also of a youth spent in the workshop and factory where his father worked as an engineer. This led to the development of his visual and material language, which combines craftsmanship with technical and formal innovation. For each of the four series presented at the gallery, Buck has either learned a new technique or simply developed one that would translate his initial idea. His works take a critical and often ironic look at various aspects of consumer society – the phenomena of mass production and globalisation on the one hand, and the human behaviour associated with consumption, capital and success on the other.
Swedish artist Tore Svensson graduated from the prestigious HDK at the University of Gothenburg, where he taught for several years. His jewellery and objects are included in private and public collections around the world. He has received professional recognition through the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committe, as well as the Herbert Hoffmann Prize in 2012. With a visual language guided by the use of simple, streamlined geometric forms, Svensson works primarily in thin sheet steel. Given the simplicity of the contours used, he relies instead on surface treatments, which give his works their depth. This is reflected in Ypsilon, a new series created for this venue and in Super Ellipse series, in which the surfaces with modulated colour ranges give a certain impression of three-dimensionality. As for the Lakes series, where the irregular shapes come as a surprise to those familiar with Svensson’s previous work, it is the nostalgia of places visited during his childhood that guides the form. Indeed, each brooch is shaped to replicate the bird’s-eye view of lakes the artist has visited in his life, and even the textures and colour modulations decorating each shape reference the diffuse memories that inhabit the artist’s mind.
Originally from Germany, Karin Seufert studied in the Netherlands, first at the Schoonhoven vocational school and then at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited extensively over the years and is included in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et de la Mode in Marseilles, the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin and the Hiko Mizuno College of Jewellery in Tokyo. Moving away from the materials normally associated with jewellery and preciousness, Karin Seufert has chosen PVC as her preferred material. Her search for materiality is as much visual as it is tactile, each object being composed of hundreds of small PVC circles that are assembled with each other. This assembly process also reflects through its result the artist’s gesture, its duration and its repetition. Reflecting the outline of each of these small elements, the silhouette of each object is derived from the same form: the circle. By slightly distorting it, bending it or removing a thin section, all very subtle interventions, Seufert manages to evoke various recognisable objects and elements, which she skilfully reduces their simplest expression. On top of different collections such as Stones and Butterfly, she is presenting for the first time her new series Bug.
An opening reception will be held at the gallery on September 2, from 5 to 8 pm. The exhibition will continue until 2 October.
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For more information :
Noel Guyomarc’h : [email protected]
