Christian Schwarzwald: Boxed

Derek Eller Gallery presents a site-specific drawing installation by Christian Schwarzwald entitled Boxed. Consisting of a series of large works on paper which are mounted on partially painted gallery walls, Boxed challenges the viewer's experience of pictorial space. As two-dimensional drawings interact with the three-dimensional room, the installation becomes sculptural. This quality is further enhanced by Schwarzwald's repeated use of the box form which functions both as a space-defining device and as a kind of presentation vitrine for the drawings within.

The majority of the works are done in charcoal and depict scenery which hovers somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Yet interspersed throughout are several images of rope structures, meticulously drawn in graphite and acrylic, and serving to remind us of the installation's architectural space both real and imagined. Viewed through such an untraditional perspective the content of the drawings is given new meaning. The notion that a larger context can re-define and illuminate a single gesture is central to Schwarzwald's work. He writes, "Like language is formed by putting together a combination of words, my drawing installations are built out of single drawings that complete one another to form a new greater picture."

Based in Berlin, Christian Schwarzwald has had recent solo exhibitions at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna and Nina Menocal Gallery in Mexico City, and has also been featured in group shows at Bonner Kunstverein and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. His drawings are in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This will be his third solo exhibition at the gallery.

Christian Schwarzwald
Boxed