123 Watts is pleased to present "24 planes per second" a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Marti Cormand and Piot Brehmer. The exhibition will open on Saturday, January 8th and will be on view through February 27, 2000.

Piot Brehmer, lives and works in Düsseldorf. He paints airport landing-strip lights on small and large formats. Titled LANDUNG his paintings stretch the instant just before a plane is touching ground at night. Although the surface of the paintings is very mat, (an almost chalky feeling is obtained by the addition of marble powder to the acrylic paint), the eye is blinking and trying to adjust to the dazzling effect of the colored dots in motion. Chains of light structure the surface: signs repeat themselves, pictures repeat themselves with minimal variations in color and perspective. Time and again the eye is landing. Taking off only to land again, in an infinite loop.

Marti Cormand, who lives and works in Barcelona, presents a series of plane explosions. His work is a reflection on rapid destruction and on the visual reception of information delivered by the media. Marti Cormand methodically investigated fragments of planes destroyed by bombings. The resulting small square paintings recall photographic film while being developed at the lab under infra-red light and the metallic fragments of planes are slowly revealed, becoming incandescent weapons. A large oil-stick drawing directly on the wall, figures a superposition of different fragments of planes in black and white. The soft rendering of the shapes gives a very charnel aspect to the intricate plane parts which form a massive organism.