Interflow

Pilar Corrias is pleased to present Interflow, a group exhibition of new and recent works by Koo Jeong A, Ragna Bley, Peppi Bottrop, Lubna Chowdhary, Hanako Murakami, Mary Ramsden, Rachel Rose, Joan Snyder and Jeff Wall.

Interflow brings together a range of work in different mediums, including photography, painting and ceramic installation, proposing a conversation between form and formlessness, abstraction and landscape. Opening with four works that depict nature in a primal state, the exhibition leads the viewer through a selection of work that evokes geographical forms and landscapes. The show concludes with Lubna Chowdhary’s Serial Structures (2023), a ceramic installation that rises vertically like a dynamic cityscape. The exhibition’s sense of flow between different scales, perspectives and mediums speaks to a dual desire to see clearly and to lose oneself in formlessness.

The dark organic forms of Peppi Bottrop's Dotv (2022), which could be a microscopic view of neural networks or a subterranean jumble of roots, greets viewers as they enter the gallery. Joan Snyder's All Over (2022) evokes the pulse of a pond coming to life at spring, overflowing with flowers and fluids, replete with pale pinks and greens and drips of earthy pigment. Jeff Wall’s Trap set (2021) features a tangled screen of grey and green branches beside a cool stream; a small trap, topped with a mossy piece of wood, suggests the human desire to master nature. Placed in a central position, Rachel Rose’s Fifteenth Born (2019) conjures a moment from the days of the origin of the earth. A glass-blown form flows over the jagged edges of a stone – chunks of matter in two contrasting states of being. For the artist, the meeting of forms and materials here presents an image of conception. Depicting nature as a raw and vibrant force, these works also imply a parallel desire to suspend time and space in a moment of contemplation.

A greater sense of clarity emerges as the exhibition expands into its second section, opening onto landscapes and broader vistas. Koo Jeong A’s Annual Journey (2013) could be a group of stones at the edge of a garden, a seascape, or perhaps a mountain range seen from a distance. Each of the small, haunting landscapes in Hanako Murakami’s series Untitled (Iris) (2020), which she makes in the darkroom by dipping vintage photographic paper into chemicals, resemble ink paintings of mountains. In Ragna Bley’s Drive (2023), washes of translucent pigment flow across the surface, evoking the creation of geographical forms. Mary Ramsden’s painting offers a mix of geometry and organic forms, suggesting the use of tools and measuring devices to tame nature, even calling to mind a patchwork of farmland from an aerial view. In Rachel Rose’s A mountainous landscape (2022), a building rises from the entropic, flowing forms – the exhibition’s first sign of architecture and a snippet of geometry that recalls the small, wooden box in Wall’s Trap set.

Lastly, the viewer encounters Lubna Chowdhary’s Serial Structures. The ceramic installation, with its sharp geometries stacked vertically on a series of shelves, expresses a crystallisation of form, hinting at the history of modernism and hard-edge abstraction. With images of Snyder’s All Over or Bottrop’s Dotv fresh in the mind, Serial Structures appears as a culmination of a process or the conclusion of a quest: from the wild and formless origins of life to a clearly organised, vividly coloured structure.

About the artists

Koo Jeong A (*1967) lives and works everywhere. Recent or upcoming exhibitions include Pompidou Metz, Metz; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Luma Arles, Arles; La Triennale di Milano, Milan. Collections include Astrup Fearley Museet, Oslo; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fond National d’art contemporain, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Nantes; FRAC Marseilles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; RISD Museum, Rhode Island; Tate, London and others. They will represent South Korea at the 60th Venice Biennale, 2024.

Ragna Bley (*1986) lives and works in Oslo. Recent exhibitions include Pilar Corrias, London; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo and Malmö Konsthall, Malmö. Collections include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden; Malmö Art Museum, Malmö; Kistefos Museum, Jevanker; Modern Museet, Stockholm; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo and others.

Peppi Bottrop (*1986) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include de la Cruz Collection, Miami; Kunstverein Duisburg; Centro Federico García Lorca, Granada; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Museum Wiesbaden and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Collections include RISD Museum, Rhode Island.

Lubna Chowdhary (*1964) lives and works in London. Recent group and solo exhibitions include MIMA, Middlesborough; PEER, London; Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai; Hayward, London and M+ Hong Kong. Collections include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Ishara Art Foundation; Jameel Arts Centre, both Dubai; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Government Art Collection, UK; Leicester City Museum; Mead Gallery, Warwick; Nottingham Castle Museum, Nottingham; Oldham Art Gallery, Oldham and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich.

Hanako Murakami (*1984) lives and works in Paris. Recent group and solo exhibitions include Taka Ishii, Tokyo; Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles; Jean-Kenta Gauthier, Paris and Jeu de Paume, Le Cellier, Reims. Collections include Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône and Jean Pigozzi Collection, Geneva.

Mary Ramsden (*1984) lives and works in North Yorkshire and London. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Pilar Corrias, London; Wentrup, Berlin; Mead Gallery, Coventry and Tate Britain, London. Collections include Tate, London; Fiorucci Art Trust, London; the George Economou Collection, Athens; Government Art Collection, London; Longlati Foundation, Hong Kong; the Zabludowicz Collection, London and others.

Rachel Rose (*1986) lives and works in New York City. Recent or upcoming solo exhibitions include GL Strand, Copenhagen; LUMA, Arles; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe; CC Strombeek, Grimbergen. Collections include Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Crystal Bridges, Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo; Galleries Lafayette Corporate Foundation, Paris; Ishikawa Collection, Japan; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; LACMA, Los Angeles; Luma Foundation, Arles; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Tate, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and others.

Joan Snyder (*1940) lives and works in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill; Canada Gallery, New York; Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York. Collections include Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Jewish Museum, all New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard Art Museums, The National Gallery, Washington, DC and others.

Jeff Wall (*1946) lives and works in Vancouver and Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include White Cube, London; Gagosian, Beverly Hills; Glenstone Museum, Potomac; George Economou Collection, Athens. Collections include Tate, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all New York; Vancouver Art Gallery, BC; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany and others.