Caro Niederer
'My practice is like an open spiral that moves with time. My work revolves around the subject of memory and the question of what remains that is valuable,' Caro Niederer
On 26 January Hauser & Wirth in London will be showing new works by the Swiss artist Caro Niederer (born 1963). The starting point for Niederer's work is often a photograph or personal snapshot which the artist then transforms and replicates in another medium: for example, photographic images are re-worked as paintings and also fabricated as silk carpets in China. For her forthcoming exhibition at Hauser and Wirth in London she will present several carpets and three large paintings.
By transferring her source material into other media, Niederer provokes unexpected interpretations from the viewer. Rather than being self-contained art objects, her paintings act as open gestures existing between the process of their production and subsequent journeys into worlds beyond the studio. The transformation of ordinary experience continues to be a central theme in the work as Niederer unlocks the relationship between photography and memory. In recent years Niederer has produced a number of paintings using various umber tones to recall early photography and images from another era. These particular paintings are then subjected to another layer of removal by being photographed in situ in a collector's home or office.
For this exhibition Niederer has changed her palette and returns to working in colour for the first time in many years. As with the paintings, the images used in Niederer's carpets undergo a similar process of re-interpretation. Hand-made in a factory near Shanghai, her carpets are fabricated from original source material in such a way that they are subjected to a form of touristic exoticism.
Caro Niederer: Alba's birthday
New Paintings and Tapestries
26 January - 10 March
Hauser & Wirth
196a Piccadilly
London W1
T: +44 (0)207 287 2300
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