KATJA NOPPES SELECTED WORKS 2001-2017 Noppes_Portfolio eng_LD.pdf · K. N. THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018 The brain is a very noisy environment: Part

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N.

KATJA NOPPES

SELECTED WORKS

2001-2017

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018INDEX

STATEMENT..........................................................................................................................pag. 3

THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT: PART II...............................................pag. 4THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT: THE WALL........................................pag. 6A HOMELESS MAN UNDER HOUSE ARREST................................................................pag. 10SPÀTER WAR SEINE ERINNERUNG ANDERS...............................................................pag. 16AN UNRESTRAINED DOG FEELS BETTER THAN A DOG ON LEASH.......................pag. 18ARCHIVIO 3........................................................................................................................ pag. 22WAITING FOR THE GUGGENHEIM.................................................................................pag. 26HALLOWEEN......................................................................................................................pag. 32UNA STANZA D’ALLUMINIO...........................................................................................pag. 37CITTÀ DI CUORI.................................................................................................................pag. 40BODY AND EXPERIENCE.................................................................................................pag. 45

CONTACTS..........................................................................................................................pag. 51

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. STATEMENT

“How do you set your orientation in an experiment? This is the question about method of any idea.”

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT

The brain is a very noisy environment: Part II, artist book, 29,7 x 21 cm

Mixed media Variable dimensions

The brain is a very noisy environment: Part II

2016

A gaze at mental pathways is unfolding within the pages of an artist’s book. Images from sources as mutually diachronic as the neuronal maps developed by contemporary neuroscience, the archaic votive sculptures in New York’s Met-ropolitan Museum and Albrecht Dürer’s anthro-pometry, are converging within the same thought pattern and transformed with ink and pen into signs. Forty-five of the original drawings havebeen framed and included in a Bookshelf hosting among a list of the books which played a struc-tural role in the evolution of the artist’s poetics, such as: Claude Lévi Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, 1955; James Joyce, J. Rodolfo Wilcock, Finneg-ans Wake, 2016; Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, 1961; Simone Weil, 1940-1942 Cahiers. To this day, over 100 drawings have been collected.

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT

The brain is a very noisy environment: Part II, detail

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The brain is a very noisy environment: Part II, Bookshelf, wood, LED light, 212 x 35 x 655 cm

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Hand-painted industrial tiles, black ink

315 x 285 cm

Installation hypothesis

The brain is a very noisy environment: Wall

2012

In 1528, Albrecht Dürer’s Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion (Four Books of Human Proportion) was published in Nuremberg. The work was totally devoted and committed to a theme that deeply obsessed the author: the theory of proportions, which he worked out into what couldnowbedefinedascomparative or differen-tial anthropometry. The brain is a very noisy environment: Wall was born from a chance encounter with a copyofthefirstItalianeditionofDürer’swork,on display in the window of a Milanese antique shop. The wall consists of an intense grid of white ceramic tiles showing the initial drawings by Albrecht Dürer, Charles Le Brun, Karl von den Steinen, R. M. Chen and other antropomet-ric maps. Initially replicated in a pen and ink self-copying process, and later transferred onto the tiles through the action of a chemical agent. The stiffness of the composition, due to the tiles’ measurement unit, is subverted by a chaotic over-lapping of the images, recalling mental patterns engaged in mutual dialogues.

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The brain is a very noisy environment: Wall, detail

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT


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Concrete, polystyrene, balsa woodApprox. 210 x 110 cm

A homeless man under house arrest

2013-17


A sculptural work-in-progress project, in-spired by an open photographic archive, exploring the shape of what is called, in technical jargon a piezometric or water tower. Each photo featu-ring the tower serves as a starting point, and the model for building the same structure and form. The only piece developed so far has been entitled A homeless man under house arrest, as a me-taphor for all the contradictions of contemporary society;thefinalsculpture,infact,lacksanykindof base enabling it to perform its primary role, collecting water. Furthermore, the tank ironically rests on the back carrier of a children’s bike.

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018A HOMELESS MAN UNDER HOUSE ARREST

A homeless man under house arrest, detail, concrete, polystyrene and balsa wood, approx. 210 x 32 x 110 cm, 2013

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. A HOMELESS MAN UNDER HOUSE ARREST

Photo archive of A homeless man under house arrest, photography, variable dimensions

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Some pictures from the photo archive of A homeless man under house arrest, photography, 10 x 8 cm, 2013-17

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A project carried forward in collaboration with Brera’s Soprintendenza per i beni artistici e eteroantropologici (National Trust for Milan’s Artistic and Foreign Anthropologic Heritage).Später war seine Erinnerung anders (Later his memory changed): Bellini’s shrine appears as an exhibition display (symbolising the reit-erated reduction of art works to museum items) containing the cleaning swabs, a precious waste material from Giovanni Bellini’s Pietà, restored in 2012. Inside the shrine, the swabs are grouped together in a maniacal organisation following a schemeconnectedtospecificareasoftheoriginalpainting (the Virgin’s mantle, Christ’s face, or the landscape). What the swabs have removed is no mere paint, but a time lapse of history of the painting.

Cleaning swabs of Bellini’s Pietà Variable dimensions

Spàter war seine Erinnerung anders (Later his memory chan-ged): Bellini’s shrine

2012


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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018SPÀTER WAR SEINE ERINNERUNG ANDERS

Spàter war seine Erinnerung anders (Later his memory changed): Bellini’s shrine, detail

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A number of images from an ever-expanding newspaper collection gives shape to An unrestrained dog feels better than a dog on leash; immaterial news-print faces meet with the body of earth’s clay, the old-est motherly medium. Each movement of the artist’s hand becomes a tangible sign of a thinking mind, and thisishow,signaftersign,thosefleetingcountenanceson the outskirts of memory become an individual, tan-gible experience.


Terracotta

Variable dimensions

An unrestrained dog feels better than a dog on leash

2012-17

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018

A few pieces from An unrestrained dog feels better than a dog on leash

AN UNRESTRAINED DOG FEELS BETTER THAN A DOG ON LEASH

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Aluminium bookshelf, newspaper clippings, pins, felt, mirror (50 x 240 cm) 300 x 60 x 330 cm

Archivio 32011

Recollection is the inescapable place for memory manipulation, like a distorting mirror for theworldtoreflectitself.Howevervividandover-flowingwithdetailsitmayappear,theconfronta-tion with reality exposes its ephemeral substance as a “bad painter” painting with “colours without truth”(Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, 1913-27). Day by day, human memory se-lects a huge quantity of acquired information, not personally tested, and stores it in a dungeon of the brain on behalf of an everyday present. And yet, this is the information that shapes an integral part of our daily historical narrative. Archivio 3 appears as a large container whose itinerant accumulation of newspaper clip-pingsareonlyvisiblethroughtheirreflectioninthe mirrors lying on the ledges of a 300 x 60 x 330 cm aluminium bookshelf, as well as a wood-en box inside a 43 x 81 x 53 cm serving as Ar-chivio 3: Spazio Extrapersonale, Spazio Perip-ersonale, Spazio Personale; just like Proust’s Madeleines, the mirrors attract and channel the viewer’s attention toward the images they hold, thus reawakening memories slumbering in the vastness of the mind.

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018ARCHIVIO 3

Archivio 3, detail

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. ARCHIVIO 3

Archivio 3: Spazio Extrapersonale, Spazio Peripersonale, Spazio Personale, installation hypothesis, wood, newspaper clippings, pins, mirror (43 x 53 x 81 cm), 2012-17

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018ARCHIVIO 3

Archivio 3: Spazio Extrapersonale, Spazio Peripersonale, Spazio Personale, detail

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Waiting for the Guggenheim, installation hypothesis, frottage, graphite on paper, approx. 5,5 x 11 m

Mixed mediaVariable dimensions

Waiting for the Guggenheim2009

Moving to another city means exploring, peering into its bowels, treading its territory inch by inch; Waiting for the Guggenheim is a series of frottage created during a two-year stay in New York (from 2008 to 2010). Central Park is the lung and life blood of the Big Apple, a space in apnea from the buy-ing and selling of men’s dealings. It’s the home to plants and millennial geological treasures, re-corded by the imprint of the rock Waiting for the Guggenheim. Safe from property speculation, the Park should become a place of poetic free-dom, as claimed by an inscription on the soil of the City Hall park : “It must not be forgotten that the park is still the refuge of the people and the cradle of liberty”.

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018WAITING FOR THE GUGGENHEIM

Waiting for the Guggenheim, detail

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. WAITING FOR THE GUGGENHEIM

Waiting for the Guggenheim: Model, ceramic, paper, 25 x 40 x 20 cm (1:20 ratio)

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Waiting for the Guggenheim: The cradle of liberty (It must not be forgotten that the park is still the refuge of the people and the cradle of liberty), c-print, 50 x 70 cm

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. WAITING FOR THE GUGGENHEIM

Some pieces from Waiting for the Guggenheim: The cradle of liberty (It must not be forgotten that the park is still the refuge of the people and the cradle of liberty), frottage, graphite, iridescent white oil on paper (approx. 60 x 120 cm each)

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Waiting for the Guggenheim: The cradle of liberty..., Model, paper, ceramics, 30 x 20 x 25 cm (scale 1:35)

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Photography10 x 15 cm

Halloween2009

Photo reportage of the yearly US folkloric event, known as New York’s Village Halloween Parade; provided with a stream of masked faces, mannequins and light sceptres in an intoxicated swirl reminiscent of the famous Temptation of Saint Antony by Gustave Flaubert.


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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018HALLOWEEN

A picture from Halloween

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. HALLOWEEN

Some pictures from Halloween

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018HALLOWEEN

Some pictures from Halloween

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. HALLOWEEN

A picture from Halloween

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Aluminium castVariable dimensions

Una stanza d’alluminio2007

Aluminium is one of the most widespread elements on the earth’s crust (8,3% weight), the third after oxygen (45,5%) and silicon (25,7%). A remarkable material thanks to its softness, light-ness and corrosion resistance, and to an extreme-ly thin oxide coating which covers its surface and prevents the underlying metal from decaying. Nowadays, aluminium is the favourite metal for building the majority of means of transport, and is a vital element in Una stanza d’alluminio, a series of sculptures featuring two horse saddles in an exploded view and three pairs of human legs.

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. UNA STANZA D’ALLUMINIO

Una stanza d’alluminio: Sella (Saddle), aluminium cast, variable dimensions

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018UNA STANZA D’ALLUMINIO

Una stanza d’alluminio: Tuffatrice (Diver), aluminium cast, variable dimensions

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Plaster, silicon rubber Average dimensions of a parallelepiped10 x 12 x 9 cm

Città di cuori2005

Although human’s emotion is silently cod-ifiedanddefinedasresidinginthebrain,ituttersan audible sound, a music of its own: the heart beat.ThisisexactlytherhythmthatisreflectedinCittà di cuori, a series of casts of pig hearts, sim-ilar to human’s, arranged as an imagined urban layout, which can be moved, and its parts opened or closed by the viewer.

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018CITTÀ DI CUORI

A piece from Città di cuori, silicone rubber, average size of a parallelepiped 12 x 9 x 10 cm

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. CITTÀ DI CUORI

Some pieces Città di cuori: Cuore in mano, lattex, silicon rubber, plaster, 21 x 21 x 21 cm

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018CITTÀ DI CUORI

Città di cuori: Mattatoio (Slaughterhouse), photography, 10 x 30 cm

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. CITTÀ DI CUORI

Some pictures from Città di cuori: Mattatoio (Slaughterhouse), photography, 10 x 30 cm

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Mixed mediaVariable dimensions

Body and experience: Bodies are re-cidivist, in vain you could say, becau-se they fall nonetheless

2001-10

In the age of communication and rampant technological progress, body perception has un-dergone an experiential shift from the tactile to the visual experience; the typically western ten-dency to privilege optical-visual senses against other senses, along with the advent of the digital era, has increasingly drained the body of its most intangible part, undetectable for the eye: the soul. Just by being man’s archetypal means of expres-sion, painting as body print in this case, becomes the place of an authentic translation of existence, where intuition prevails over the rationality of art-making, which is summarised within the for-mal aspect of painting. In Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, be-cause they fall nonetheless, painting is made of successive layers where the media against which the colour-soaked bodies are pressed become the repositories of a memory of their own, of a time they have gone through, outweighing and re-sig-nifying the immediacy of printing.

Some paintings Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall nonetheless #1,canvas,fiberglass,pigment,epoxideresin,50x45cm,2009

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SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018K. N. BODY AND EXPERIENCE

A painting from Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall none-theless #1, canvas,fiberglass,pigment,epoxideresin,50x45cm,2009

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018BODY AND EXPERIENCE

Some paintings from Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall nonetheless, Lory, painted glass, paper, pigment, 100 x 70 cm, 2010

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Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall nonetheless, Lory #3, painted glass, paper, pigment, 100 x 70 cm, 2010

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K. N. SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018BODY AND EXPERIENCE

Process documentation of Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall nonetheless, photography, 30 x 10 cm, 2001

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Some pictures from the process documentation of Body and experience: Bodies are recidivist, in vain you could say, because they fall nonetheless, photography, 30 x 10 cm, 2001

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Katja Noppes / Visual artist based in Milan / [email protected]

Documents

KATJA NOPPES SELECTED WORKS 2001-2017 Noppes_Portfolio eng_LD.pdf · K. N. THE BRAIN IS A VERY NOISY ENVIRONMENT SELECTED WORKS 2001-2018 The brain is a very noisy environment: Part