I have a couple of pieces in this group show opening Friday, December 1st.
It is titled Leftovers and curated by Soft Within. Looks like a good one.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Ersatz-Bourgeois.
Ersatz-Bourgeois. Sarah Kretchmer and Sophie Iremonger.
Rigaer Straße, Berlin.
November 24, 2017.
Sarah Kretchmer . 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.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Wiebke Siem and Ann Veronica Janssens at Esther Schipper, Berlin.
Press Release: Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Wiebke Siem’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Under the title Damenskulptur, the artist presents seven new textile works and a series of new drawings.
The new sculptures, made of soft knitted fabric and more than two meters long, hang in the exhibition space. Each consists of basic geometric shapes in different variations. The forms of the pompons or fringes refer to the history of modern sculpture (especially the Bauhaus and Minimalism), while the figurative elements such as head, hands or feet counteract this serial arrangement at the same time.
The new series also explicitly refers to Siem’s early works and combines motifs from the artist’s sculptural iconography with formal elements from fashion. For example, Siem takes up the surrealistic designs of Elsa Schiaparelli. At the same time, the new series also revisits the topic of the usability of works of art.
The drawings indicate this potential for the usability of these Soft Sculptures. They show the sculptures in their full length, as well as a scarf draped around the outline of a neck. The juxtaposition emphasizes the humorous side of the objects.
The works will be shown in a museum-like presentation. While some earlier exhibitions resembled the display of museum of the history of science or an ethnographic museum, here the display of a museum of fashion is evoked – although all associations are not mutually exclusive, especially in the work of Siem. At the same time, the placement of the sculptures in the darkened room recalls a stage, especially the black stage of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet.
Starting from the history of fashion, art and design, Siem creates sculptures that address the legacy of modernism from a feminist perspective.
Wiebke Siem was born 1954 in Kiel, Germany. The artist lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Siem studied Sculpture and Printmaking from 1973 to 1978 at Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel, as well as Sculpture from 1979 to 1984 at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. She was a visiting professor for Sculpture at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, followed by a professorship for Sculpture from 2002 to 2008.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Wiebke Siem, Zeichnungen, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2017– ongoing); Wiebke Siem – What Things Dream, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Labor, Düsseldorf (2016); Wiebke Siem, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2015); Wiebke Siem – Kaiserringträgerin der Stadt Goslar, Mönchehaus-Museum, Goslar (2014); Wiebke Siem im Atelier Karin Sander, Studio Karin Sander, Berlin (2014); Geister, Installation im Treppenhaus der Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2012); Die Fälscherin, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2009); Maskenkostüme, on the occasion of the Edwin Schar Award of the city of Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle – Galerie der Gegenwart (2004), and Collection, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2001).
Among selected group exhibitions are: Edwin Schar Preisträger Hamburg, Edwin Schar Museum, Neu Ulm (2017), HONEY, I REARRANGED THE COLLECTION, Hamburger Kunsthalle – Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg (2016); Summer Guests, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2016); Gesichter zwischen Figur, Porträt und Maske, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2015); Regionalismus, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2013), and Gute Gesellschaft, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel (2012).
The new sculptures, made of soft knitted fabric and more than two meters long, hang in the exhibition space. Each consists of basic geometric shapes in different variations. The forms of the pompons or fringes refer to the history of modern sculpture (especially the Bauhaus and Minimalism), while the figurative elements such as head, hands or feet counteract this serial arrangement at the same time.
The new series also explicitly refers to Siem’s early works and combines motifs from the artist’s sculptural iconography with formal elements from fashion. For example, Siem takes up the surrealistic designs of Elsa Schiaparelli. At the same time, the new series also revisits the topic of the usability of works of art.
The drawings indicate this potential for the usability of these Soft Sculptures. They show the sculptures in their full length, as well as a scarf draped around the outline of a neck. The juxtaposition emphasizes the humorous side of the objects.
The works will be shown in a museum-like presentation. While some earlier exhibitions resembled the display of museum of the history of science or an ethnographic museum, here the display of a museum of fashion is evoked – although all associations are not mutually exclusive, especially in the work of Siem. At the same time, the placement of the sculptures in the darkened room recalls a stage, especially the black stage of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet.
Starting from the history of fashion, art and design, Siem creates sculptures that address the legacy of modernism from a feminist perspective.
Wiebke Siem was born 1954 in Kiel, Germany. The artist lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Siem studied Sculpture and Printmaking from 1973 to 1978 at Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel, as well as Sculpture from 1979 to 1984 at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. She was a visiting professor for Sculpture at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, followed by a professorship for Sculpture from 2002 to 2008.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Wiebke Siem, Zeichnungen, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2017– ongoing); Wiebke Siem – What Things Dream, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Labor, Düsseldorf (2016); Wiebke Siem, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2015); Wiebke Siem – Kaiserringträgerin der Stadt Goslar, Mönchehaus-Museum, Goslar (2014); Wiebke Siem im Atelier Karin Sander, Studio Karin Sander, Berlin (2014); Geister, Installation im Treppenhaus der Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2012); Die Fälscherin, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2009); Maskenkostüme, on the occasion of the Edwin Schar Award of the city of Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle – Galerie der Gegenwart (2004), and Collection, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2001).
Among selected group exhibitions are: Edwin Schar Preisträger Hamburg, Edwin Schar Museum, Neu Ulm (2017), HONEY, I REARRANGED THE COLLECTION, Hamburger Kunsthalle – Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg (2016); Summer Guests, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2016); Gesichter zwischen Figur, Porträt und Maske, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2015); Regionalismus, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2013), and Gute Gesellschaft, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel (2012).
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Damenskulptur: Wiebke Siem |
Ich rede zu Dir wie Kinder reden in der Nacht: Ann Veronica Janssens
November 4 – December 16, 2017
Press Release: “[…] and I talk to you as children talk in the night: my face
pressed up against you and my eyes closed, feeling your nearness, your
safety, your presence” – Rainer Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salomé, August 10, 1903.
Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Ich rede zu Dir wie Kinder reden in der Nacht, Ann Veronica Janssens’ fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Janssens—who has borrowed her title from one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s letters to his muse and lover Lou Andreas-Salomé: “I talk to you as children talk in the night”—will present for the first time in Berlin a new indoor iteration of her iconic mist installations. Once visitors pass the threshold of the exhibition space, they will find themselves immersed in a room filled with thick mist bathed in a combination of natural and artificial light, moving into an immaterial colored abstraction in green, yellow and pink, where any spatial or temporal landmark has disappeared. With this immersive environment, Janssens pursues an artistic experiment started in 1997 with MuHKA Antwerp, her first white fog room conceived on occasion of her exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp. Since then, the artist has created a number of mist installations, either monochromatic or multicolor, using natural or artificial light.
Since the late 1980s, Janssens has developed an artistic practice based on light, color, and natural optical phenomena. She continuously experiments with the characteristic attributes of carefully chosen materials (glass, mirrors, aluminum, artificial fog), shapes, and light, wielding our perception of reality to create a recurrent vocabulary of minimalist motifs and beautiful colors.
Janssens’ fog installations place visitors in an unknown territory where senses of vision and audition cannot be trusted anymore. As explained by the artist: “Gazing at mist is an experience with contrasting effects. It appears to abolish all obstacles, materiality, the resistances specific to a given context, and at the same time, it seems to impart a materiality and tactility to light.” The experience provokes different reactions: some find it exhilarating, while others might experience dizziness or anxiety. By filling closed spaces with a haze of colored artificial mist, Janssens creates situations confronting visitors with their own perception of space and themselves in it.
In 2001, as part of her solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the artist presented Blue, Red, and Yellow—a rectangular “mobile sculpture” shaped like a standard container—on the plaza of Mies van der Rohe’s modernist building. Each side of the pavilion was covered with a different color film (red, blue, yellow, and transparent), while inside a fog machine filled the space with mist. The work was one of the first colored fog rooms created by the artist and was reiterated on occasion of Janssens’ major 2016 exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.
Ann Veronica Janssens was born in 1956 in Folkestone, England. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Janssens’ recent solo exhibitions include: Naissances latentes, SHED, Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville, L’Aître Saint-Maclou and Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (2017); mars, Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhônes-Alpes (2017); Ann Veronica Janssens, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink, Wellcome Collection, London (2015); Philaetchouri (in collaboration with Michel François), La Verrière, Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Brussels (2015); Ann Veronica Janssens (in collaboration with Nord Projects/Laurent Jacob), Museum Cappella Sansevero, Naples (2014); Septembre, Frac Corse, Corte (2013); Ulysses – Ellipse, Eglise Sainte-Honorat des Alyscamps, Arles (2013); Ann Veronica Janssens, Ausstellungshalle Zeitgenössische Kunst, Münster (2010); Serendipity, WIELS, Brussels (2009); Ann Veronica Janssens – An den Frühling, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2007); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2003); Ann Veronica Janssens, Kunsthalle Bern (2003); Ann Veronica Janssens, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2002), and Light Games, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001).
Her work was also included in the acclaimed group exhibition Light Show at the Hayward Gallery in London (2013), which travelled to Auckland, Sydney, Sharjah and Santiago (2014/2016).
In 1999, she represented Belgium with Michel François at the 48th Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann.
November 4 – December 16, 2017
Ich rede zu Dir wie Kinder reden in der Nacht: Ann Veronica Janssens |
Ich rede zu Dir wie Kinder reden in der Nacht: Ann Veronica Janssens |
Janssens—who has borrowed her title from one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s letters to his muse and lover Lou Andreas-Salomé: “I talk to you as children talk in the night”—will present for the first time in Berlin a new indoor iteration of her iconic mist installations. Once visitors pass the threshold of the exhibition space, they will find themselves immersed in a room filled with thick mist bathed in a combination of natural and artificial light, moving into an immaterial colored abstraction in green, yellow and pink, where any spatial or temporal landmark has disappeared. With this immersive environment, Janssens pursues an artistic experiment started in 1997 with MuHKA Antwerp, her first white fog room conceived on occasion of her exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp. Since then, the artist has created a number of mist installations, either monochromatic or multicolor, using natural or artificial light.
Since the late 1980s, Janssens has developed an artistic practice based on light, color, and natural optical phenomena. She continuously experiments with the characteristic attributes of carefully chosen materials (glass, mirrors, aluminum, artificial fog), shapes, and light, wielding our perception of reality to create a recurrent vocabulary of minimalist motifs and beautiful colors.
Janssens’ fog installations place visitors in an unknown territory where senses of vision and audition cannot be trusted anymore. As explained by the artist: “Gazing at mist is an experience with contrasting effects. It appears to abolish all obstacles, materiality, the resistances specific to a given context, and at the same time, it seems to impart a materiality and tactility to light.” The experience provokes different reactions: some find it exhilarating, while others might experience dizziness or anxiety. By filling closed spaces with a haze of colored artificial mist, Janssens creates situations confronting visitors with their own perception of space and themselves in it.
In 2001, as part of her solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the artist presented Blue, Red, and Yellow—a rectangular “mobile sculpture” shaped like a standard container—on the plaza of Mies van der Rohe’s modernist building. Each side of the pavilion was covered with a different color film (red, blue, yellow, and transparent), while inside a fog machine filled the space with mist. The work was one of the first colored fog rooms created by the artist and was reiterated on occasion of Janssens’ major 2016 exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.
Ann Veronica Janssens was born in 1956 in Folkestone, England. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Janssens’ recent solo exhibitions include: Naissances latentes, SHED, Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville, L’Aître Saint-Maclou and Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (2017); mars, Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhônes-Alpes (2017); Ann Veronica Janssens, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink, Wellcome Collection, London (2015); Philaetchouri (in collaboration with Michel François), La Verrière, Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Brussels (2015); Ann Veronica Janssens (in collaboration with Nord Projects/Laurent Jacob), Museum Cappella Sansevero, Naples (2014); Septembre, Frac Corse, Corte (2013); Ulysses – Ellipse, Eglise Sainte-Honorat des Alyscamps, Arles (2013); Ann Veronica Janssens, Ausstellungshalle Zeitgenössische Kunst, Münster (2010); Serendipity, WIELS, Brussels (2009); Ann Veronica Janssens – An den Frühling, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2007); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2003); Ann Veronica Janssens, Kunsthalle Bern (2003); Ann Veronica Janssens, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2002), and Light Games, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001).
Her work was also included in the acclaimed group exhibition Light Show at the Hayward Gallery in London (2013), which travelled to Auckland, Sydney, Sharjah and Santiago (2014/2016).
In 1999, she represented Belgium with Michel François at the 48th Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann.
ESTHER SCHIPPER
Labels:
Ann Veronica Janssens,
art exhibition,
Art in Berlin,
Artists,
Berlin,
Berlin Galleries,
contemporary art,
Damenskulptur,
Esther Schipper,
female artist,
light,
sculpture,
Wiebke Siem
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Sislej Xhafa - shadow of curls. Blain Southern, Berlin.
Press Release:
Blain|Southern presents shadow of curls, Sislej Xhafa’s first exhibition in Berlin.
At the core of Xhafa’s practice are the identity politics that surround the legal status of his country of origin, Kosovo, as well as broader ideas of power, politics, immigration and social and economic mobility. Many of these themes are explored in his pavilion this year at the 57th Venice Biennale, representing the Republic of Kosovo.
In shadow of curls, Xhafa works with a variety of materials associated with different types of migration, as well as a range of quotidian objects that have been re-appropriated, altered or rendered useless. Employing a conceptual mode, he draws upon the history of the readymade to ironic, humorous and subversive effect.
At first glance, an olive tree next to the entrance looks out of place amid artworks. Yet attached to it’s trunk, a tag reads ‘dont touch me’, drawing on ideas of ownership and privacy, while alluding to the history of the olive tree as a symbol of peace, or the tree as witness to history.
In the corner of the space sits a large checked plastic bag, an object so common that it is almost synonymous with human movement. The open bag partially reveals a crystal chandelier, hinting at the hope of a new life, or perhaps a sense of suffocation.
Hanging alongside one another, slightly away from the wall, are large canvases painted uniformly white and each partially covered in clear polythene. Closer inspection reveals barbed wire on the wall, a menacing barrier to another space mostly concealed by the pristine paintings. For Xhafa, the clean, perfect surface masks a darker, grim reality.
In contrast, a monochromatic black painting hangs opposite. The matt surface subtly broken by the word ‘Chicago’ painted in black gloss onto the canvas, which has been tipped on its side. This almost illegible reference is an example of the visual poetry common in Xhafa’s work. Avoiding direct metaphor, the work references multi-layered definitions of violence.
Xhafa’s readymades are household objects, a garden hose, a refrigerator, garbage bags, mattress and a sun shade; his use of concrete has equally domestic connotations of home building, permanence and belonging, yet paradoxically of entrapment and brutal economics.
shadow of curls creates a space where familiar objects are transformed into charged, ambiguous artworks, inviting visitors to participate in conversations about specific moments in history or current affairs, or universal questions about human freedom.
11 November – 23 December 2017. Blain Southern.
Blain|Southern presents shadow of curls, Sislej Xhafa’s first exhibition in Berlin.
At the core of Xhafa’s practice are the identity politics that surround the legal status of his country of origin, Kosovo, as well as broader ideas of power, politics, immigration and social and economic mobility. Many of these themes are explored in his pavilion this year at the 57th Venice Biennale, representing the Republic of Kosovo.
In shadow of curls, Xhafa works with a variety of materials associated with different types of migration, as well as a range of quotidian objects that have been re-appropriated, altered or rendered useless. Employing a conceptual mode, he draws upon the history of the readymade to ironic, humorous and subversive effect.
At first glance, an olive tree next to the entrance looks out of place amid artworks. Yet attached to it’s trunk, a tag reads ‘dont touch me’, drawing on ideas of ownership and privacy, while alluding to the history of the olive tree as a symbol of peace, or the tree as witness to history.
In the corner of the space sits a large checked plastic bag, an object so common that it is almost synonymous with human movement. The open bag partially reveals a crystal chandelier, hinting at the hope of a new life, or perhaps a sense of suffocation.
Hanging alongside one another, slightly away from the wall, are large canvases painted uniformly white and each partially covered in clear polythene. Closer inspection reveals barbed wire on the wall, a menacing barrier to another space mostly concealed by the pristine paintings. For Xhafa, the clean, perfect surface masks a darker, grim reality.
In contrast, a monochromatic black painting hangs opposite. The matt surface subtly broken by the word ‘Chicago’ painted in black gloss onto the canvas, which has been tipped on its side. This almost illegible reference is an example of the visual poetry common in Xhafa’s work. Avoiding direct metaphor, the work references multi-layered definitions of violence.
Xhafa’s readymades are household objects, a garden hose, a refrigerator, garbage bags, mattress and a sun shade; his use of concrete has equally domestic connotations of home building, permanence and belonging, yet paradoxically of entrapment and brutal economics.
shadow of curls creates a space where familiar objects are transformed into charged, ambiguous artworks, inviting visitors to participate in conversations about specific moments in history or current affairs, or universal questions about human freedom.
Sislej Xhafa. shadow of curls. Blain Southern, Berlin. |
Sislej Xhafa. dear one. (convex acrylic mirrors, resin, cement). |
Sislej Xhafa. still life on left lane (Plastic bag, crystal chandelier). |
Sislej Xhafa. raw breeze -detail. (Acrylic on canvas, polythene, barbed wire). |
Sislej Xhafa. raw breeze -detail. (Acrylic on canvas, polythene, barbed wire). |
Sislej Xhafa. desert in hole (refrigerator). |
Sislej Xhafa. dancing in the dark. |
Sislej Xhafa. dry shade (wooden umbrella, resin, cement). |
Sislej Xhafa. the bindery (Garbage bags, human hair). |
Sislej Xhafa. stinging pocket (single mattress, cacti). |
Sislej Xhafa. stinging pocket (single mattress, cacti). |
Sislej Xhafa. shouting in the wind (3 lighters). |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin. Berlin. 2017
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin. Berlin. 2017
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. Grace. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie. On the Beach. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Toy. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Press Release:
The opening of Adrian Ghenie’s exhibition The Graces
marks—to the day—the 10th anniversary of his first solo exhibition
for gallerist Juerg Judin. The works in that exhibition, Shadow of a Daydream,
were all painted in muted, somber colors that upon closer inspection
were revealed as rich hues of unexpected variety and depth. Created
at the very beginning of his career, they attested to what would make
his paintings so distinctive, relevant and ultimately
influential: his ability to stage his personal experience of
history, an understanding of the collective memory and his profound
knowledge of art history in complex, multilayered and suggestive
paintings. In the ten years that followed this auspicious
beginning, Ghenie’s paintings have gained color and
materiality—at the same time as they have become more abstract. He
applies paint in broad brushstrokes, only to scrape it off the canvas.
The richly textured surfaces are the yield of what could be described
as ‘action painting’, revealing the scars of the tackling that occurs
during the artist’s battle with his subject. In his endeavor to fuse
image and painting, Ghenie welcomes ‘accidents’, alternating between
action and reaction.
In The Graces, Ghenie is not presenting a
homogenous group of works, as regards either the subject matters or
the media he uses. As is often the case in his gallery exhibitions,
Ghenie combines revisitations of subjects that he has explored in
previous exhibitions with entirely new pictorial inventions.
Seasoned visitors of Ghenie exhibitions know that they will
experience both, the pleasure and comfort of recognition, as well
as the shock of the new. In this exhibition (and the simultaneous
exhibition at Galeria Plan B), Ghenie reveals his skills as a
draftsman in a group of large charcoal drawings. This surprising and
highly successful foray into a, for him, new technique concerns both
the continuation of the Berghof series, and the new thematic groups.
Ghenie’s fascination with the Berghof, Hitler’s
holiday retreat in the Bavarian mountains, can be traced back to a
painting he made in 2008. It showed an untidy stack of presumably
stolen paintings left behind by Nazi leaders. The next Berghof,
painted in 2012, did not allude to the chaos of the inglorious end of
Hitler’s rule, but rather showed a peaceful scene with a seated male
figure on thefamous terrace, looking onto the spectacular alpine panorama. In the new Berghof paintings, the monumental Alpine Retreat 2, Study for ‘Alpine Retreat 2’ and Berghof, as well as the large charcoal drawing The Happy Host and the collage The Way of All Flesh, Ghenie returns to the iconic terrace. It is the unsettling historical footage of Hitler as a family man, friendly uncle and caring partner of Eva Braun, that fuel the artist’s imagination. All the while, the fact that in Alpine Retreat 2 Eva Braun can be seen as being pregnant starts off a whole different movie in the viewers mind.
Both the large painting Hunting Scene and the charcoal drawing The Hunter
are based on a typical genre painting by a minor Dutch master, which
Ghenie discovered in the Hermitage. In it, a well-dressed huntsman,
flanked by his loyal dogs, stands in a graceful pose and looks
confidently at the viewer. In the drawing, Ghenie picks up on this
figure’s grace, disclosing the possible origin of the
composition. In the painting, however, only the dogs are
distinguishable, in the foreground of a furious landscape. Rampant
abstraction has gained the upper hand in this composition.
Beauty of a more concealed nature emerges from the
painting Grace and the charcoal drawing of the same title. The figure
of the walking woman, if it is indeed a woman, reminds us of the
voluptuousness that was the definition of female beauty in the days
of Rubens. Ghenie is reflecting on the preeminence of light skin
(i.e. the ‘Caucasian race’) in art history. It’s not just European art
that favored a white complexion. In Asian art from past centuries, the
depiction of human flesh rarely relates to the darker skin color of
the local populations. This is a phenomenon that Ghenie intends to
address in future works. The figure’s lateral pose is atypical in
Western art history—it reminds us of Muybridge’s pioneering
photographic studies of motion. And indeed, the painting is based on a
black & white photograph of the artist’s mother walking on a Black
Sea beach.
In The Toy, the whiteness of the figure’s
skin contrasts sharply with the rich reds of the background. The
figure’s gender is unclear, but since it has shouldered a rifle, we
assume it’s a boy. Like the female figure in Grace, the body in this painting seems overexposed by an unlocatable source of light.
The three self-portraits in the exhibition are a
continuation of Ghenie’s examination of his own physiognomy.
Recently, the portrayals have become more and more deconstructivist.
In the painting On the Beach, we see him sitting in front of
a spectacular seascape. It, too, is composed in a deconstructivist
manner, made up of oddly shaped elements in colors that we don’t
necessarily associate with water. The artist has painted himself
faceless, recognizable only by his silhouette, familiar from many
other self-portraits. His desire to merge his own face with that of a
historical figure (Darwin, van Gogh, Hitler) or an animal seems to
have given way to a more existentialist inquiry into human
nature—using his own face as readily available stand-in for the
common man.
Adrian Ghenie. Study for Alpine Retreat. Self-Portrait. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. Alpine Retreat 2. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie. Hunting Scene. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie (detail). |
Adrian Ghenie. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. Self-Portrait. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Way of All Flesh. Galerie Judin |
Adrian Ghenie. The Graces. Galerie Judin |
18 November 2017 – 3 February 2018. Galerie Judin.
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