Artists Anonymous will have their debut UK gallery exhibition, ‘Lucifer over London’, a series of original paintings, photographs and films, at Riflemaker from 21 September.
The exhibition comprises of three major new works arranged in the format of a ceiling-high ‘open book’: a painting on the left, photograph (‘after-image’) on the right and a film running down the centre.
Artists Anonymous, I Love the World and the World Loves Me, afterimage 180 cm x 130 cm, c-print. Courtesy the artist and Riflemaker
Artists Anonymous are a collective of three painters, photographers and filmmakers. They describe themselves as primarily painters but all three media are used in their installations. Often the time-based media of performance and film are utilised in the same way as other artists plan and develop projects through drawing.
The artists themselves always appear in their work but as a collective they forego their individual identities to collaborate on a permanent basis. They operate within agreed rules established when they first met at art school in Berlin in 2001. Agreeing at that time that no individual would ever work independently of the group. They would always operate as Artists Anonymous.
In the performance element of their work, each member of the group develops a character over a period of time that they act out or improvise, alone or with others, and often in elaborate costume. By taking on a new persona in this way they draw out ideas that are translated into painting.
For the Apocalyptic Warriors series (2007-08), the artists invented characters whose personalities related to their own. Each member of the group took on a temporary alter ego, like the pairings of Clark Kent and Superman or Bruce Wayne and Batman, roles played out across a period of three days resulting in a selection of videos and photographs.
As with an artist who has sketched out their ideas in graphite, Artists Anonymous’ performance and film work leads to the making of an original painting that is then photographed as a negative version of the original. The group consider that every work has another within it, therefore it is a natural progression to paint an image and then create one or more ‘after-images’.
Artists Anonymous’ are featured in many museum and private collections worldwide. Recent exhibitions include Hamburger Bahnhof and the Liverpool Biennale.
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