NEW YORK
The First Ending: Resembling Noir
curated by Matt Bollinger
November 5 - December 15, 2013

Corey Antis
Matt Bollinger
Katharina Ziemke

Zürcher Studio is very happy to announce “The First Ending : Resembling Noir, a group-show curated by Matt Bollinger at Zürcher Studio, New York. Matt Bollinger refers to the design of a film noir, a cinematic term which is less a genre than a visual style that emphasize low-key lighting and often associated with an urban setting. Film noir has roots in German Expressionist cinematography from the twenties and thirties (Murnau, Fritz Lang) and in the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression (Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler). Film noir also refers to documentary stylistic elements : shooting in black and white, using gloomy and mysterious lighting, shooting from forced or extreme camera angles. The question is not to debate what defines film noir, but to resume the strange, elusive, dreamlike, sometimes trashy and sometimes erotic attributes of film noir. All of these aspects of a “noir” resemblance appear in the works of Matt Bollinger, Corey Antis and Katharina Ziemke. Bernard Zürcher

The First Ending : Resembling Noir

Film noir is the after image of hyper-saturated melodramas. Antis, Ziemke and I each independently arrived at new sensibilities within our work ; each resembled noir. They collectively functioned as a visual dialect that enabled us to engage in new and generally bleaker subjects. Noir is a sweaty darkness where bad men smile. It is an antidote, by turns morally muddled or immaculately evil, seasoned with fact and fatalism.”
“Noir countered the optimism of other popular film of its day through a conflation of documentary realism and the theatrics of German Expressionism. I find this same oppositional balance in the Maysles brothers’ Gimme Shelter, Joan Didion’s The White Album, and Neil Young’s "ditch" trilogy. I view this work that Antis, Ziemke and I have been making, not as an analysis of noir but a participation in its atmosphere. Like Young said in the wake of his commercial success with "Heart of Gold", "This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there." (Liner Notes, Decade, 1977). In our work, this personal take on noir is an opportunity to engage with our darker sides. Matt Bollinger

Corey Antis

Corey Antis was born in Pittsburgh, PA. His work has been exhibited in national and international exhibitions at the Rebekah Templeton Gallery, Dolphin Gallery, Greenlease Gallery at Rockhurst University, Booster and Seven Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, Three Walls, Heaven Gallery, Jenny Jaskey Gallery, the D.C. Arts Center, Greenstone Gallery, Hunter College, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Frieze Projects Art Fair, the Stray Show and SPACE Gallery. In addition, his work has been published in catalogs including Architectural Inventions : Visionary Drawing and New Visual Language. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute. His work is represented by Haw Contemporary in Kansas City. He currently lives and works in Kansas City, MO.

Matt Bollinger

Matt Bollinger was born in 1981 in Kansas City, MO. He received his BFA in Painting and Creative Writing from the Kansas City Art Institute, and received his MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has shown in solo exhibits at Rodger La Pelle Galleries in Pennsylvania, Hudson D.Walker Gallery in Massachusettes, Zürcher Studio in New York, and Galerie Zürcher in Paris, France. His work has been included in group exhibits at Fahrenheit Gallery in Missouri, Sol Koffler Gallery in Rhode Island, Michael Rosenthal in California, Spaceshifter in New York, and Land of Tomorrow Gallery in Kentucky. He has been selected for the New York Moment Show, January – May 2014, Museum of St. Etienne, France. His work is represented by Zürcher, Paris, New York. He currently lives and works in upstate NY.

Katharina Ziemke

Katharina Ziemke was born in 1979 in Kiel, Germany. She has shown in solo exhibits at Galerie Zürcher in Paris, France, Kunstraum B. in Kiel, Germany, and Heroes and MANZONI SCHÄPER in Berlin, Germany. Her work has been included in group exhibits at Société Psychanalytique, La Générale, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Galerie Eva Hober, and Galerie Zürcher in Paris, France, and in Jordan/Seydoux, MANZONI SCHÄPER, Babette, Pavillon vor der Volksbühne, and Freies Museum in Berlin, Germany. She has also exhibited in Luxembourg and New York, and her work is currently represented by Zürcher, Paris, New York. Most recently she’s worked as Set Designer for BAM’s presentation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, directed by Thomas Ostermeier. She currently lives and works in Berlin.