Night Shift

If the mesmerising, kaleidoscopic website for Night Shift is anything to go on, the show opening at Simon Oldfield gallery next week is set to be something of an assault on the senses.

Simon Schafer, performance/video 2011
Simon Schafer, performance/video 2011

Night Shift is a joint show from artists Simon Schäfer and Katy Kirbach, using painting, sculpture and performance to explore the tension between live events and still objects and multiplicity and uniqueness.

The show’s title also hints at the overall look at the meetings and parallels of night and day, while the amalgamation of colour and texture with sounds, digital feed and analogue electronics examines the links between the handmade and ready-made.

Katy Kirbach, Easy Breezy 2011
Katy Kirbach, Easy Breezy 2011

Kirbach’s abstract paintings featured in Night Shift are predominantly black, with flashes of bold, electric colour. With one eye on the hand that creates them, the artist speaks though deliberate misalignments, with paint slippages, rips, cuts and drips nodding to the hand-made notion the work explores. These qualities create a feel of quickness, fighting against the ideas of measured patterning and repetition inherent to the process of creating the work.

Katy Kirbach Night Dust detail 2011
Katy Kirbach Night Dust detail 2011

The idea of pace is also shown in Schäfer’s sculptural works, which aim to highlight modern media and communication’s ability to change the world at breakneck speed, and how they will continue to do so in future.

Simon Schafer,  kinetic sculpture 2011
Simon Schafer, kinetic sculpture 2011

His sculptures feature found objects including old computers and redundant technologies of old (such as old games consoles and 1990s video editing hardware), forming surreal objects that create their own mini-world of commotion with their emission of sound and light.

Simon Schafer,  installation/performance
Simon Schafer, installation/performance

Night Shift runs from 8 – 28 September at Simon Oldfield Gallery, 9 Henrietta Street, London, WC2E

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