PAUL SCHWER

Big Baos

Translated loosely, the title means “big Chinese dumplings.” In the exhibition, they are made of a painted synthetic material, which, thermally moulded into a baroque arrangement of folds, knows neither inside nor out, or else wraps itself around the interior space it creates, becoming packaging. Though solidified, it never ceases to reveal the process of its creation.

This is time coagulated in a high-gloss painterly shell with matte colour fields broken up into floes that drift on transparent polyethylene. It is amorphous colour turned into space, unfolding freely in space but also forcing itself into pieces of furniture like dressers or small cabinets. Or into geometrically constructed casings and architectural bodies that recall models.

Keen cuts open the space and the images. They penetrate both, like the noise or sound of the swarms of scooters and motorcycles that pierces Asian cities.