Tjorg Douglas Beer

Camp Hope

June 6th –
July 2th, 2008
Gstaad
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Camp Hope 10/Mental Rental,2008
    Mixed media on mirror
    60 x 45 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Camp Hope 01/Misleaders Inc,2008
    Mixed media on mirror
    60 x 45 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Suspectors/Angels II,2008
    Mixed media on aluminium
    223 x 181 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Soldier 03/Mao Marter,2008
    Painted terracota, fabric and wood
    66 x 32 x 48 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Soldier 04/Ministry of hope,2008
    Painted terracota, fabric and wood
    87 x 30 x 66 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Soldier 02/OH,2008
    Painted terracota, fabric and wood
    83 x 32 x 48 cm
  • Tjorg Douglas Beer
    Soldier 01/Department of sword,2008
    Painted terracota, fabric and wood
    150 x 97 x 94 cm

Patricia Low Contemporary is pleased to announce Camp Hope, the second solo exhibition by Tjorg Douglas Beer in the gallery.

Tjorg Douglas Beer’s work features worlds, in which every day life is shown both in its absurdity and reality, mixing politics, religion and social phenomena as well. He raises his concern about these themes in displaying them ironically and in a whimsical way. At Patricia Low Contemporary, Beer stages his Camp Hope, infiltrating the whole gallery with his portraits, panel-like collages, sculptures and installations. The visitor experiences a setting of different semantic and iconic levels. Camp Hope stands at the same time for military camps, headquarters of wiretapping and battle-grounds, revived by underground guerilla-fighters in the midst of a camp-fire. They are at once protagonists and actors in a post-civilian setting. Stranded ideals at the end of an assumed world-order where good and bad, east and west meet a new ubiquitous holiness: portraits of supposed losers, are by means of his delicate collage technique and painting on mirrors, formed into fragile icons.

At the same time the influence of hyper-paranoid realities, produced by electronic monitoring, persecution and media-hunting becomes evident in the scene.

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Beer develops suspense between reality and irony, not without a certain dose of cynicism. He confronts the viewer with his work, on one hand with the ugly grimace of the grotesque, and on the other, allows him to find refuge in a pictorial reality, which in spite of everything is full of breathtaking poetry.

On the basis of these principles, Beer develops his figures, presenting themselves not only as stereotypes emerging from the pool of countless icons but also as actors whose function and roles articulates Beer’s fundamental interest in overlapping layers of signifiers.

Formally, this can be observed in his interest in collage-techniques, which meanders through Beer’s works. At the same time, a certain aloofness marks his artistic process. Crinkled paper figures hesitate between physical state, thin-skinned vulnerability and trash. Ephemerality, accumulation and potential openness can be found in further media used by Beer: his installations are constructions made of wood, foil, cardboard, plywood, aluminium, marker, acrylic paint and adhesive foil. Terracotta soldiers made from painted flower pots, bring the theme of war into the domestic backyard.

Tjorg Douglas Beer’s exhibition displays collages, large-scale works, sculptures and installations. Co-currently as this exhibition in Gstaad, Beer presents his first museum show, NARKOSE #02 in the City Gallery of Heerlen, Netherlands.

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