Entwurzelt / Uprooted. Green Hill Gallery. Berlin.

 Vernissage September 7, 2019.

Entwurzelt / Uprooted: Kunst zwischen Migration, Heimat und Natur.
Green Hill Gallery
Gruppen Ausstellung. 07.09. - 15.11.2019

(from the press release).
(en) Kulturschöpfer presents 17 international artists who have dealt with the themes of migration, homeland and nature:  

The issue of migration is omnipresent today. Thus the question of home or the concept of home is not far away. Many people have to find a new home, be it for humanitarian, economic or climatic reasons. But even people who are not directly affected by migration feel increasingly uprooted, especially in the cities. What is home like? And what role does nature play in this?

(de) Kulturschöpfer präsentiert 17 internationale Künstler, die sich mit den Themen Migration, Heimat und Natur auseinandergesetzt haben: 

Das Thema Migration ist heute omnipräsent. Dadurch ist die Frage nach Heimat oder dem Begriff Heimat auch nicht fern. Viele Menschen müssen eine neue Heimat finden, sei es aus humanitären, wirtschaftlichen oder klimatischen Gründen. Aber auch Menschen, die nicht direkt von Migration betroffen sind, fühlen sich, besonders in den Städten, zunehmend entwurzelt. Was macht Heimat aus? Und welche Rolle spielt die Natur dabei? 

Frank Hemjeoltmanns (Deutschland)

Michael Gatzke - detail (Deutschland)

Frankie Gao (China)

Zoran Georgiev (Bulgarien)

Zoran Georgiev (Bulgarien)

Nadia Petrovic - detail (Kanada)

Curator, Therese Berg (centre).

Curator, Therese Berg (right).

Rubab Paracha (Pakistan)

Rubab Paracha (Pakistan)

Participating Artists:
Eduard Bischoff (Deutschland), Chris Dennis (UK), Frankie Gao (China), Michael Gatzke (Deutschland) Zoran Georgiev (Bulgarien), Frank Hemjeoltmanns (Deutschland), Ahmad Karno (Syrien), Veronika Kranzpiller (Deutschland), Ala Leresteux (Litauen), Chris Palm (USA), Rubab Paracha (Pakistan), Selin Le Bagousse (Türkei), Nadia Petrovic (Kanada), Trygve Skogrand (Norwegen), Karinka Szabo-Detchart (Frankreich), Sophia Weisstub (Israel), Mansoureh Yekta (Iran).

EXHIBITION CONTINUES UNTIL NOVEMEBR 11TH, 2019. 

green hill gallery

Nina Jørgensen - FLOW. Das Giftraum, Berlin. Feb 8th.

Henning Strassburger. Kenny. Blain Southern. Berlin. Jan 2019

Press Release: Blain|Southern presents new paintings and works on paper by Henning Strassburger (b.1983 Meissen, Germany) for his first exhibition with the gallery. 
Strassburger’s latest series of works can be seen as the continuation of two earlier series, Pool and Jane, with the use of splashes, the grid, and the subtle accentuation of the painting's edge reappearing. In all three series, he draws references from pop-cultural semantics, where the deliberate adoption of an English word, over the native tongue, loads it with associative meaning. 
The title of his new exhibition 'Kenny', refers to the artist’s recurring experience when ordering coffee at Starbucks in the US. ‘Henning’ is consistently misheard as ‘Kenny’, raising questions around the artist’s identity. ‘Kenny is me, but of course he isn’t’ he says, ‘I am a sort of split persona. This is of great interest and fascination to me… Kenny also stands for an aspect of pop culture, bringing to mind Kenny from South Park, or Kenny Rogers.’

 blain southern

Mat Collishaw. the Grinders Crease. Blain Southern. Berlin. Jan 2019

Press Release: Blain|Southern is delighted to present The Grinders Cease, an exhibition by Mat Collishaw, his first with the gallery in Berlin. The exhibition testifies to the depth and breadth of Collishaw’s practice, with new and recent works including installation, sculpture, photography and painting.

Collishaw is a key figure in an generation of contemporary British artists who came to prominence via the group show Freeze in 1988. He has never shied away from challenging subject matter, exploring ideas around death, destruction and decay. The artist is known for works that reference art history and create a contemporary dialogue with past masters.

The Grinders Cease reflects his preoccupation with the vanitas theme, used since the Renaissance as a way of reminding viewers of the impermanence of worldly pleasures.The exhibition title is borrowed from the King James Bible, Book of Ecclesiastes, from which the Vanitas derives. The exhibition opens with a new work from 2018, Columbine, which animates Albrecht Dürer’s watercolour study Columbine from 1526. This wild plant is a multifaceted example of the transience of life, both in that it blooms only briefly and because the plant itself is poisonous. 

 

The exhibition continues through three separate light-locked spaces. In the first, Albion takes as its subject the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, England. This centuries-old mythical tree has a hollow rotten trunk, and since the Victorian era its vast limbs have been supported by an elaborate system of scaffolding. Collishaw’s slowly rotating, almost life-size image of the oak is a ghost-like apparition generated by both cutting-edge laser scans and an antiquated technique of theatrical projection. Empty at its core, the image represents a living object which is trapped in perpetuity to present the illusion of life. The title also partly derives from

the idealised concept of an ancient England that probably never existed.

Last Meal on Death Row, Texas is a series of photographs of meals requested by actual prisoners prior to execution. Presented in the manner of Flemish still life paintings they are a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the impermanence of life on earth. Another series, the Black Mirror works, have another effect on the viewer: capturing single figures whose forms have been subtly animated to move behind a surveillance mirror framed in elaborate black Murano glass, the works reflect the viewer’s image and thus draw a connection between the past and present.

The grand finale is provided by Seria Ludo, a 3D zoetrope sculpture. This kinetic optical illusion rotates at increasing velocity before strobe lights kick in and animate the scene, revealing a frenzied chaos of debauchery. 180 tiny figures can be seen carousing across the framework of the chandelier in a manic, drunken orgy. This is a party, but a desperate one, and when will it stop?

 blain southern

Ersatz-Bourgeois.

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer and Sophie Iremonger.
Rigaer Straße, Berlin.
November 24, 2017. 

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer (detail).

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sophie Iremonger.

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sophie Iremonger.

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sophie Iremonger.

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sophie Iremonger (detail).

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer (detail).

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sophie Iremonger (detail).

Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer and Sophie Iremonger.

 Sarah Kretchmer .  Sophie Iremonger.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Coup d'Oeil. New Orleans. June 2017.

Here are some pics from my 'final(?)' show at Coup d'Oeil Art Consortium in New Orleans.

It was quite a surprise that so many ghosts decided not to come home with me.

Press Release (abbreviated): 

CHRIS DENNIS: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
A special exhibition presented by Coup d’Oeil Art Consortium, New Orleans
June 9th and 10th 2017.
Coup d’Oeil Art Consortium is pleased to welcome the return of Chris Dennis in June, for a special two day exhibition of paintings, spanning his exhibition history with the gallery.
Chris Dennis joined Coup while it was still in its infancy, back in 2009. In that time, he has participated in numerous group shows and salons at the gallery, featured at art fairs in Miami and New York, and presented three well received solo shows:  

*Any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely intentional (2009), detritus (2011) and Please Be Quiet, Please (2013).
New Orleans is a hard town to turn your back on, and when Chris left Louisiana in 2010 he left behind many belongings and a lot of paintings, leaving the door open for a possible return. But, after three years in Auckland (NZ) and three in Zürich (CH), Chris has settled with his family, in Berlin.

Chris has recently exhibited in group and solo shows across Europe and New Zealand including Auckland, Berlin, London, Brighton, Saint Gallen and Zürich. In 2016 he presented MOTIF/MOTIVE, (his most ambitious solo show to date), at the Jedlitschka Gallery in Zürich, Switzerland and in May 2017 he had a solo booth at the 25th anniversary of Huntenkunst in the Netherlands.
Please join us on the evening of Friday June 9th, 2017 from 5pm – 8pm and on Saturday June 10th from 10am -2pm. Chris will be in the gallery from early Friday morning, hanging the show. If you are unable to make the opening, please stop by anytime during the day to view the work, say hello or goodbye, and perhaps save him the trouble of putting a piece on the wall.