Jetzt erhätlich: Der Ausstellungskatalog von "DREAM BABY DREAM" im Haus Mödrath

Morton Bartlett, ohne Titel, ca. 1950, vintage silver gelatin print, 13 x 10 cm

 

Der Ausstellungskatalog zur Ausstellung "Dream Baby Dream" im Haus Mödrath erschienen

Dort schreibt Kuratorin Gesine Borcherdt über Morton Bartlett:

"Wir treten hinaus auf den Flur. Zum Fenster hin hängen vier Zeichnungen und drei schwarzweiße Vintage-Fotografien. Sie alle zeigen Mädchen oder vielmehr: Puppen, von denen eine seltsam sexuelle Atmosphäre ausgeht. MORTON BARTLETT (1909 in Chicago - 1992 in Boston) hat sie nicht für die Augen der Öffentlichkeit gemacht: Die fünfzehn fast lebensgroßen Puppen - zwölf Mädchen und drei Jungen - formt er von 1936 bis 1963 aus Gips, detailgenau vom Fingernagel bis zum Geschlecht, kostümiert sie mit Perücken und selbstgenähten Kleidern und setzt sie für seine Fotografien lebensecht in Szene. (...)"

Für weitere Informationen und eine Leseprobe klicken sie hier.

FORREST BESS at the Fridericianum

Forrest Bess: Untitled (No. 5), 1949 © The artist and Collection Mickey Cartin

 

Forrest Bess at the Fridericianum
February 15, 2020 – September 6, 2020  

"Forrest Bess, born in 1911 in Bay City, Texas, where he also died in 1977, led an extremely secluded existence in the first half of the 1940s on the Gulf of Mexico, where alongside catching and selling fishing bait he dedicated himself to painting. During this time, Bess began to systematically encapsulate in painting “visions” that appeared to him on the threshold between wakefulness and sleep. For Bess, subconscious human experiences manifested themselves in these abstract and highly symbolic images. He pursed their exploration like a piece of obsessive research that he articulated in countless records and intensive correspondence without ever unravelling the mystery of his creativity.
The Fridericianum presents the first exhibition in Germany of the artist’s work for over three decades. The show allows visitors to rediscover this outstanding exponent of postwar art, who is as relevant for contemporary discourse as he is enigmatic."

For additional information about the exhibition please click here.

Exhibition "Kasten" at the Stadtgalerie Bern extended until July 11, 2020

Adelhyd van Bender, untitled, 1999-2014, 50 x 37 x 25 cm

 

Adelhyd van Bender on view at Stadtgalerie Bern 
as part of the exhibition "Kasten"

curated by Cédric Eisenring and Luca Beeler until July 11, 2020

"Folders and boxes serve as physical structures in Adelhyd van Bender’s work, whose cryptic systematization employs graphic and scientific means, repetition and variation. Against the backdrop of impending self-destruction during the Cold War, Adelhyd van Bender developed an obsessive fascination with atomic radiation that preoccupied him up to his death in 2014. Repeatedly appearing in his countless drawings are geometrical diagrams reminiscent of atomic models, orders of the universe or mystical models – like the Sefiroth of the Kabbalah. These also include missile-like structures, maps of alleged nuclear power plants in Germany, plans for the city of Moscow and radiation warning signs. The status of the contents inside the fourteen commercial and variously patterned storage boxes remains unclear. The A4 sheets, often copied multiple times and in some cases showing slight variances, are most likely original material the artist intended to work on further. The boxes also contain official documents – some of which also reappear in drawings – mail-order catalogs, magazines and other material."


The exhibition features among others:

Kaspar Müller, Phung-Tien Phan, Vaclav Pozarek, Marta Riniker-Radich, Julia Scher, Richard Sides, Davide Stucchi, Sergei Tcherepnin

"Ton, Steine, Beton" // FAZ-Artikel über die aktuelle Gruppenausstellung "Just Another Day"

Prophet Royal Robertson, untitled (Space Scene), ca. 1980s, 

Tinte und Marker auf Papier, 45,7 x 61cm

 

FAZ-Artikel über die aktuelle Gruppenausstellung "Just Another Day" erschienen!

"„Kein besonderer Tag“ – als durchaus besonders dürfen die Werke der Künstlerinnen und Künstler in dieser Gruppenschau gelten, allesamt Charaktere, die sich in eigenen gedanklichen Universen bewegten, exklusives Wissen über die Welt generierten und daraus exzeptionelle Kunst hervorgehen ließen: Zeichnungen, Stickereien, Polaroids, konzeptuelle Grafik, serielle Blätter, bisweilen in einer ausufernden Anzahl, die gegen unendlich tendiert. Es seien längst nicht mehr nur Connaisseure der Outsider-Art, die solche Werke kauften, so die Galeristin Susanne Zander, vielmehr kämen auch junge Sammler, die sich ganz einfach für zeitgenössische Kunst interessierten. 

Etwa für die symbolistischen Fotokopien mit Tabellen, Schautafeln, Mischtechniken des gelernten Elektrikers Harald Bender (1950 bis 2014), der, nachdem er arbeitslos wurde, in den siebziger Jahren an der Berliner Hochschule der Künste studierte. Dort wurde er, aus nicht bekannten Gründen, zwangsexmatrikuliert. Hirngespinste bemächtigten sich der Geisteswelt des jungen Mannes: Einen Uterus wähnte er in sich mitsamt einem sicherlich belastenden atomaren Geheimnis. Fortan taufte sich der Künstler Adelhyd van Bender. Mehrere hundert Aktenordner füllen in der Galerie die Regale mit dem Nachlass; was er in den Abertausenden Diagrammen – auf Geheiß höherer Mächte – akribisch und tabellarisch chiffriert, dürfte eine Wissenschaft für sich sein. Von bezwingendem Charme sind hingegen die farbigen Zeichnungen des Amerikaners „Prophet“ Royal Robertson: Als seine Ehefrau den gelernten Schildermaler aus Louisiana 1955 nebst gemeinsamen zwölf Kindern verließ, vermutete er im anderen Geschlecht eine Verschwörung gegen sich und wetterte in Bildern dagegen, die an Raymond Pettibon denken lassen. (...)"

Georg Imdahl 

Den vollständigen Artikel finden Sie hier.

Artikel über das neue Buch "Bruno Schleinstein"

Buchdeckel "Bruno Schleinstein", herausgegeben von Nicole Delmes und Susanne Zander, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

 

Artikel über Bruno Schleinstein von Gunnar Lützow erschienen!

"Bruno Schleinstein: Ein großer urbaner Unbequemer
Aufgewachsen in der Wittenauer Heilstätte und mitten in Berlin immer an den Rändern beheimatet, war der Musiker und Künstler Bruno Schleinstein eine Inspiration für Oscar-Gewinner Elliott Smith und spielte bei Werner Herzog Kaspar Hauser. Jetzt ist ein würdigendes Buch erschienen."

Gunnar Lützow   

Den vollständigen Artikel finden Sie hier.

"Bruno Schleinstein"
Mit Texten von Annett Krause & Bruno Schleinstein

Herausgegeben von Nicole Delmes und Susanne Zander 
Veröffentlicht im Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln
Erhältlich bei Delmes & Zander und in der Buchhandlung Walther König

 

Just Another Day / 2020

Horst Ademeit, untitled, 20.05.1998, polaroid edited, 11 x 9 cm

Just Another Day - Kein besonderer Tag

From May 5th, 2020

Just Another Day presents works by five artists whose practices all look closely at a world turned upside down. Observe, describe, document and record: it is in daily routine that the search for explanations and paths to change find their expression. Together, they depict the artistic possibilities for dealing with varying conceptions of the world.

We will be showing the works in our Lindenstrasse space from May 5, 2020. In addition to visiting the gallery, it is also possible to view the exhibition online via Skype or FaceTime by appointment.

Exhibited artists:

Horst Ademeit

Adelhyd van Bender

Helga Goetze

Prophet Royal Robertson

August Walla

Bruno Schleinstein / INDEPENDENT NEW YORK 2020

Bruno Schleinstein, untitled, undated, mixed media on paper, 30 x 42 cm,

 Bruno Schleinstein at Independent New York

March 6th - March 9th 2020

"What must the itinerant traveller think when he dreams he’s home again – and is awoken by a song from his own country only to see that he’s in a foreign land.” 
Bruno Schleinstein

Bruno Schleinstein is born in 1932 in Berlin, the youngest of three illegitimate children. Unable to cope with the responsibility of raising her young child, his mother gives him over to the custody of a children’s home when he is just three years old. He lives there for the following six years. As a so- called Reichsausschusskind (a designation for mentally and physically disabled children deemed “unworthy of life” under the NS euthanasia programme), he is transferred to the Wiesengrund educational facility at the Bonhoeffer Nerve Clinic in Berlin in 1941. Doctors employed at Wiesengrund are by this time already performing medical experiments on the children that often end in the latter’s deaths. There is no record of whether any such experiments were performed on Schleinstein himself. What is certain, however, is that he can describe the operations carried out on the children there in detail. 

Schleinstein remains locked up even after the war’s end. Following several unsuccessful escape attempts, he is transferred to a psychiatric hospital for children in 1947, justifed on the grounds of

his “obdurate tendency for escape.” In 1955, he fnally succeeds in escaping from the facility and travels to Baden-Baden. He returns to Berlin in 1963 and fnds a job at the Borsig-Werken, where he remains employed until his retirement. 

An advertising display board for the company Asbach Uralt featuring a Moritaten (street ballad) singer gives Schleinstein the idea of taking up the profession himself. From this point on he spends his weekends wandering the city’s rear courtyards, where he performs music with an accordion and glockenspiel. He also illustrates his songs with his own painted display boards. An employee of the Akademie der Künste becomes aware of Schleinstein and invites him to participate in a Moritaten festival being held there. Schleinstein makes his frst record, through which the flmmaker Lutz Eichholz becomes aware of the singer. This leads to his frst flm: 1966’s Bruno the Black. 

In 1973, Werner Herzog, who has just fnished writing the script for his flm The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and is seeking to cast the lead role of Hauser himself, sees Eichholz’s flm during a screening by the German public broadcaster ARD. Herzog is fascinated by Schleinstein’s authentic and unaffected personality and contacts the artist, subsequently casting him in the lead role under the stage name Bruno S. The flm is screened as a German contribution to the 1975 Cannes Film Festival and is awarded the Grand Prix by the jury. In 1977, Bruno S. again plays the lead role in Herzog’s flm Stroszek – a role written especially for him by the director.

Bruno Schleinstein becomes a global star. Despite this, he continues to work as a forklift operator during the week and to spend his weekends playing music in courtyards. He draws and paints continuously. 

The frst exhibition of Schleinstein’s pictures takes place in a Berlin bar in 1983, with his frst gallery exhibition following a year later at endart gallery in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. Delmes & Zander exhibits Schleinstein’s paintings and drawings from the late 1990s on. They are shown with great success at international art fairs and in both solo and group exhibitions. It is his fellow artists that are most fascinated with the authenticity and directness of his work, however. As an autodidact who taught himself to play music, to draw and to paint, and who always strove to perfect his technique, Schleinstein serves as an inspiration to them. And so it is above all artists, photographers, flmmakers and musicians that come to play a role in Schleinstein’s life and allow him to operate as an artist amongst other artists. Bruno Schleinstein dies in Berlin in 2010. 

A monograph of Bruno Schleinstein’s work, edited by Susanne Zander and Nicole Delmes, was published in early 2020, offering a view of his multifaceted artistic output.