A Faint Ground

Karolina Albricht | Heike Kelter | Darren O'Brien | Hannah Rath | Bettina Weiß

22.04. - 01.05.2022

Opening: Friday, 22.04.2022, 6-10 pm

"Recently I was trying to remember the feeling of fresh grass under bare feet. The sensation of the grass between my toes, its delicate and earthy feeling, cool and green.
To some degree looking at artworks can be like the feeling of fresh grass under bare feet. Eyes register the artwork as a whole, taking it in, searching for links, but then sense the surface, its unique detail, its thread, its pitch. With our eyes we walk the faint ground like our feet feel the fresh grass.
In this age of uncertainty what is certain is the ground beneath us."
Darren O’Brien, ASC Gallery

A Faint Ground is the first exhibition in a collaborative series connecting London's ASC Studio's + Gallery with Berlin's HilbertRaum. Two artists from London connect with three from Berlin in an exhibition that looks at painting and sculpture across two European cities, a snapshot of the current. Curated by Darren O’Brien and Tobias Sternberg.
The upcoming exhibition project Asc Hilbert is more than just a series of shows. We think of it as a surface of contact for the art communities of the two cities. Spanning over several years, ASC Gallery and HilbertRaum will together organize and curate up to 4 shows a year taking turns between the two spaces and drawing artists from our combined networks. We hope that this long term collaboration will not only introduce exciting fresh art to a new audience, but also help facilitate lasting connections between art professionals in the two cities, and thus support the development of early and mid-career artists.

Karolina Albricht (b. 1983 in Krakow) is a London based artist and curator. Painting, to her, is an attempt to generate an active space, an environment which can be perceived and responded to through our intellectual and physical faculties, through the sum of our senses.
Karolina graduated with an MA from The Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 2008. Prior to that she completed Socrates-Erasmus at ArtEZ Institute of Fine Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands in 2007. In 2020 she finished Turps Studio Program in London. Her recent solo exhibitions include 16 Branches High at Studio West (London) and OFF-BEAT at JGM Gallery (London). Her recent group exhibitions include Generous Space at Hastings Contemporary (Hastings, UK), L2022NDON at Gelleri Ismene (Trondheim, Norway), 21 Fathoms at ASC Gallery (London). Her awards include Tyson Award, ArtGemini Award, she was longlisted for Contemporary British Painting Prize, RA Summer Exhibition, Threadneedle Prize and APT & Fenton Arts Trust Award, among others.
www.karolinaalbricht.com

Heike Kelter, born in Münster, has lived in Canada, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa.
She now lives and works in Berlin. Her paintings are the subject evidence of a contemplation into place (landscape) and function (nature). Landscape as a source for a distinct place and time, led by aptitude, visual decisions and a sublimated correlation of form and colour.
Shows include KickLine at Thaler Original Grafik (Leipzig), Circling the Square, Thames Side Gallery (London), MalerinnenNetzWerk at Museum der Bildenden Künste (Leipzig), Seance Fiction at Kunstverein Familie Montez (Frankfurt), Zündung at Turps Gallery (London),
Black Box at Kunsthalle Lüneburg, Fokus on Abstraction at Milchhof (Berlin), Painting XXL at Kunst Halle A1 und Gallery Leuenroth (Frankfurt), Bloße Landschaft at Städtische Galerie Waldkraiburg, 21+at Kunstraum am Schauplatz (Vienna) curated by Axel Huber and two shows at Polarraum Hamburg.
www.heikekelter.de

Darren O'Brien was born in Kent (UK) and now lives and works in London, having his studio in Brixton and being co/director of ASC Gallery. He studied fine art painting at both St Martin's and Winchester School of Art. Painting and drawing are central aspects of his practice, where paintings dance with the moment and are often physical in nature with folds, cutouts and add-ons. Recent threads used random sticks found on walks as a starting point for a body of work, and hats have also become a recent motif.
Recent group exhibitions include Twenty/20 at Mgalleries (Washington, USA), the RA Summer Exhibition in 2021, States of Disruption at MIR Project Space, (Rotherhithe, UK), and Capitulo 1 PADA at AMAC Art Centre (Lisbon). Solo presentations include PADA Art Residency Gallery (Lisbon), 4 Paintings at The Cube, Grafton Quarter studios (London), 100 Paintings/GR11 at Erlang House, ASC Gallery (London). Recent curated projects include I Celebrate Myself at ASC’s Old Lambeth Court House Project Space, In (Matters of the Soul) and Flumblelovelifekisturbingandflexy at ASC Gallery (London).
www.darren-obrien.co.uk

Hannah Rath was born in Marburg/Lahn and lives and works in Berlin. She studied sculpture at the HFBK Hamburg, where she received her diploma in 2010 under the supervision of Pia Stadbäumer and Hanne Loreck.
Hannah Rath has participated in exhibitions around the world. Venues include the Institut Français Milano, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Museum für Konkrete Kunst (Ingolstadt), Galerie Bittel (Hamburg), the Kjubh Kunstverein (Cologne), Galerie der Trittauer (Wassermühle), Schloß Agathenburg, the Falckenberg Collection (Hamburg) and the Hidden Gallery (Istanbul).
Works by Hannah Rath form part of public collections such as the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Stormarn or the artist-book collection of the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
She has been the recipient of a research scholarship from the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius (2019), a travel grant to Istanbul from the Cultural Foundation of Hesse (2018), an artistic residency at the Château de Millemont and project funding from the Hamburg Office of Culture and Media (2017), a working grant for visual art from the city of Hamburg (2016), an art scholarship from the Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Stormarn (2015-16) and other funding.
Since 2016 Hannah Rath has been a member of the artist collective THE BOOKS. Together with Matthias Meyer she founded the publishing house of the same name in 2020.
www.hannah-rath.com

Bettina Weiß studied art at the Kunsthochschule Kassel with Professor Rob Scholte. In 1999 she moved to Berlin to study at the Universität der Künste with Prof. Leiko Ikemura and graduated in 2004 as a master student. She currently lives and works in Berlin.
In her work she makes references to the beginning of abstract art, counting the artists Hilma af Klint, Frantisek Kupka, Sonja Delaunay and Emma Kunz as her influences. Since 2009 Bettina Weiß developed her painting style on wood and canvas on the basis of nature, starting with ornaments from far eastern cultures, in a geometrically abstract, intensely colourful expressiveness. Over the years she has more and more reduced the various elements and colours, and give the surfaces in the picture more weight through different materialities which are placed shimmering and matt against each other.
Since the turn of the millennium, Bettina Weiß's works have been shown internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Seoul, Daegu, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, London, Helsinki, Vienna and in various places in Germany.
www.bettinaweiss.de