LONDON.- Playfully referring to the artist’s country of origin, the show’s title uses the colloquial development of language as a departure point. Fifty years ago the word ‘blitz’ would need to be used delicately, especially in London - yet the passage of time allows for words and symbols to become liberated of their original context, freely adopted for multiple purposes. The contemporary use of this term might be used regarding the act of completing a task quickly, even flippantly. Considering this shift from historically charged content to informal slang, Blitz brings together artistic practices that channel these processes of co-option and transformation.

Appropriating diverse materials such as cloth, dye, paper, cling-film, spray paint and candle wax these four artists employ an exploratory approach to image making that plays particular attention to surface and gesture and further explores painting as a language.

The transformation of the traditional white gallery space - suggesting a Victorian salon or historical art institution - provides an aesthetic contrast but also places the work in a museum context which conflicts with the provisional and open nature of the work.

Roman Liška’s use of decidedly inexpensive materials in the production of his work highlights the discrepancy between the potential added value produced by the ideological system of its circulation and the use value of the product in its original application. The post-critical approach evident in the work’s refusal to point out the already obvious, also speaks about the difficulty of producing any kind of significant critical position that is more than merely a gesture. Instead, a strategic over identification with the display of the chosen material puts the ball into the viewer’s court to make sense of the work’s angle.

In the series F and Auch die schönste Frau ist an den Füßen zu Ende (‘Even the most beautiful woman ends at the feet’), David Ostrowski demonstrates the significance of surface and gesture. His artistic language is deployed through continuously adding or discarding visual material and colours. Ostrowski removes pieces of canvas to create voids in the surface that are then to be reinserted to fill the very gap it had previously left. Defects that arise through this gestural process of mistakes are born of an intention to allow the unplanned to happen and to place the fast-paced agility of the hand before that of the mind. The viewer is presented with a ‘concept painter without a plan’. The image ultimately displayed is not a homogeneous picture; scars and edges may be admired.

The motifs and patterns created by Chris Succo are printed using a special technique onto Scottish cotton and then hand dyed. The dyeing process is an association of Succo´s work with analogue photography whereby the canvas replaces the photographic paper and the dye replaces the developer. Although the work is based on the same basic motif this development process results in each work being highly unique.

In Seb Koberstädt’s work we observe transformation and reworking of material that directly affects the ‘pure surface’. Using a process of burning down candles and rotating the canvas at specific intervals the surface is built up of multiple layers. The holes where the candles once stood, marks of smoke, drips of wax and the areas where the primer has brunt off to reveal the support, create an abstract design that is largely determined by chance.

Chris Succo (b.1979) in Düsseldorf, Germany, lives and works in London and Düsseldorf. Succo studied at the Academy of Fine- Arts Düsseldorf with Prof. Georg Herold 2003/2009, and Meisterschüler of Prof. Georg Herold 2008 before completing his BA at Goldsmiths College, London 2009. He will complete his MA at the Royal College of Art, London Sculpture program later this year. Recent exhibitions include The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills, Solo show at DUVE Berlin, (2011), Everything You Ever Liked About Your Mother, 15 Howie Street, London, (2011) and FIN, Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, (2011).

Roman Liska (b.1980) in Slovakia, lives and works in London. Currently at the Royal College of Art on the MA Painting program to complete in the summer of 2013. Recent exhibitions include Painting, is a painting, is a painting (2012), Loading Spaces, Brickhouse (curated by Guy Gomley), Site Festival, Stroud (2011), PAMI: Peckham Artist Moving Image, (2011); N/V_PROJECTS, London (2011)

Seb Koberstadt (b.1977) in Heidenheim, lives and works in Düsseldorf. In 1998-2002 Koberstadt studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany and in 2007 Peter Mertens stipendium. Recent exhibitions include DRECK, EINE ARBEIT VON SEB KOBERSTADT, Parkhaus im Malkasten (2010), Düsseldorf, group exhibition at Galerie Luis Campana, Berlin (2011), and Everything You Ever Liked About Your Mother, 15 Howie Street, London, (2011) and FIN, Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, (2011).

David Ostrowski (b.1981) in Cologne, lives and works in Cologne. Ostrowski stadied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Albert Oehlen). Recent exhibitions include Die Luegnerin, FORMAT:C, Düsseldorf (2011), A Thing is a thing in a whole which it’s not, Mike Potter Projects, Cologne (2010) and THE REST IS HISTORY, Mike Potter Projects, Cologne (2010).