Federico Bianchi Gallery is pleased to announce Alexander Wolff’s third solo show in the gallery, opening on October 3th, 2013 at 6.30 p.m. in Via Imbonati 12, Milano. 

Alexander Wolff's paintings continually try to disintegrate the traditional process of painting, or invent new possibilities to engage with the dialogue between the canvas and the paint itself. Focusing on the primary conditions upon which picture-making depends, he tries to analyze the most basic circumstances that produce whatsoever form.

The exhibition brings together works from the last two years, out of which some have been created during the artist's 2-year stay in Los Angeles. There he started experimenting with the use of fabric dye that gets thrown or poured directly on the wet canvas, resulting in a paint application that is completely integral to the fabric fiber. The paint becomes one with the canvas, the material of the canvas, cotton or linen, which is at the base for the artistic formal decisions, becomes inseparable with the design. In a further continuation of the relation between these two elements, Alexander Wolff has begun to take apart the succession of processes that generally constitute a painting, and to make works where the sewing together of singular pieces into a whole canvas becomes intermixed with the application of dye, or the use of the fabric itself  as a printing device or brush.

At the base of these experiments stands the examination of the languages of painting as a whole and the reflection about the conditions for the occurrence of a specific aesthetic: reductionist or gestural, figurative or abstract, decorative or functional, representational or concrete are categories increasingly insufficient and limited for encountering and contextualizing a work of art. For Alexander Wolff the myth of creation and the ground for decisions are more connected with intention and intuition, which are in every case specifically situated in a cultural and historical context.

Also in the exhibition will be shown the video "Churches on West Adams Boulevard", which the artist also produced in Los Angeles over the course of 2011 and 2012. The 3 1/2 hour long piece is a study of architecture and interior design along the 6-mile long street in the L.A. neighborhood of West Adams. It is a portrait of spiritual America and its multifaceted appearances, as well as of an area with a specific history and a distinctive aestethic somewhere between improvisation and communal identity.
F urther on a new series of publications of the artist will be shown under the title "Painter Biographies", for which Alexander Wolff has designed a bookshelf based on a sculpture by Heimo Zobernig from 1990. The "Köln Skulptur" serves as a printing plate for the backdrop of the exhibition scene and reflects the interrelations of art history and printed matter.

Alexander Wolff (b. 1976, Osterburg, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main and Akademie der Bildenden Küenste, Vienna. Works of Alexander Wolff have been shown in the exhibitions "Made in Germany 2", Sprengel Museum/Kestnergesellschaft/ Kunstverein Hannover 2012, as well as at the Portikus (Frankfurt), at Kai 10 (Duesseldorf), Museum Moderner Kunst and Secession (Vienna) as well as in solo exhibitions in the Westfälischer Kunstverein (Muenster) and Kunstverein Luebeck (Luebeck). He appeared in a number of solo and group exhibitions in commercial galleries including Galerie Mezzanin (Vienna), Galerie Ben Kaufmann(Berlin), Natalia Hug (Cologne, Galerie Johann König (Berlin), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, The Approach (London), Eleven Rivington (New York).