The Map

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

– Elizabeth Bishop (1935)

Ulrich Vogl presents a series of new works across a variety of media. He takes 3D maps as his starting point, playing and working with them he changes their context. In day and night / night and day, the ragged edge of a landmass contrasts with the rigid boundary between one day and the next represented by the international date line. Vogl explores the aesthetic of these mapping techniques to consider the passage of time and various discrepancies that occur in its representation.

For the piece Alpen – half restored, Ulrich Vogl commissioned the conservator for contemporary art in Hamburg and Berlin, Claartje van Haften, to restore a map of the Alps by removing streets, cities and other symbols of civilisation using the same restoration techniques often used to repair damaged paintings. In doing this, he suggests a landmass free from human colonisation. The ‘ready-made’ map gets almost completely over-painted and thus becomes a painting. ‘Back to nature’ in this case actually means leaving many human traces behind. In the process of overlaying the map, manipulating it and altering it gradually through the medium of paint, familiar topographies are subverted.

The fifteen maps in the exhibition will be presented alongside two previous installations by Vogl that have also centered on the issue of land and territory.

Ulrich Vogl will discuss his practice and give an introduction to his exhibition the nature of drifting, at the National College of Art and Design on the 23rd of November at 12.30pm in the Rupert Guinness Hall.

Vogl’s exhibition, the nature of drifting is part of the Dublin Gallery Weekend. There will be an informal walkthrough at the gallery on Saturday the 25th of November at 11.30am. Artisan coffee and pastries will be provided by Grantham Café’s award winning baristas. Free Event, All Welcome. There will also be a walking tour in the local area including an introduction to a number of exhibitions. The walking tour details are as follows, The Coombe Tour, Saturday 25th of November 12.30pm. Meeting Point: Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin continuing to NCAD Gallery and Pallas Projects.