Canadian Art International: Anton Henning
Haunch of Venison, London
For his recent exhibition "Sandpipers, Lizards & History," the German artist Anton Henning took over the three-floor gallery space at Haunch of Venison with what proved a complex and cohesive installation.
Under a stairwell on the first floor, Henning installed an extra-large flat screen that displayed a slow-moving pan of a rather dull beach scene together with two paintings—one of his now-signature entangled sinuous forms and one of a dark reclining nude. It was hard, at first, to see the connection between these works, either stylistically or thematically.
On the second floor, the gallery space opened onto a salon-style lounge with chairs, a painted table and wall-mounted lamps. The furnishings served as decor for a series of oil paintings. The paintings again consisted of twisting abstract forms and nudes. In one of them, Pin-up No. 96 (Ariadne), a reclining woman, arms behind her head and slices of cucumbers over her eyes, lies on what could be one of Henning's abstract paintings, with a solid field of black beyond the horizon line. The gallery walls, which were painted in rectangular colour fields delineated by thin bands using sophisticated colour harmonies, were also incorporated into the set-up.
With pale yellow carpet and glowing Plexiglas cubes that served as seating, the third floor was also lounge-like. Here, paintings were hung salon-style and the walls were again painted in flat, geometric areas of colour. One wall cleverly camouflaged a long rectangular painting done in the same motifs, heightening the effect of collision between real and painted worlds. Henning's full range of painting styles was shown—nudes or pin-ups reminiscent of Picabia; geometric works, including swirling vortexes of solid colours that the artist calls "Hennlings"; a full-frontal self-portrait on a beach and an enormous, six-metre-long beach scene. Made using a subdued palette and much wet-in-wet technique, the last works showed accomplished drawing and linked with the video playing downstairs.
Overall, the exhibition's studied combination of photo-painting, modernist tropes, abstract forms and installation elements had an additive, strangely immersive effect that gave Henning's show a sudden, unexpected cohesion.
Fall 2005
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