OUTRAGEOUS blog // GALERIE ZANDER

Uraufführung "Sammlung Prinzhorn" ein Tanztheaterstück Im Schauspiel Heidelberg

2012-02-08T12:28:00.002+01:00

Premierenabend, 18. Februar

Johann Kresnik entwickelte seine bahnbrechende Idee eines modernen choreografischen Theaters von 1979 bis 1989 als Ballettdirektor am Theater Heidelberg. Jetzt, nach über 20 Jahren, kehrt er zurück – mit einer Inszenierung, die Schauspiel und Tanz, bildende Kunst und Musik verbindet zu einem einzigartigen Gesamtkunstwerk: Sammlung Prinzhorn über den Arzt und Kunsthistoriker Hans Prinzhorn.

Prinzhorn kam in den 20er Jahren an die Psychiatrische Klinik der Universität Heidelberg. Hier sammelte er über 5.000 künstlerische Arbeiten von Patienten psychiatrischer Anstalten in ganz Europa. Die Sammlung sollte schon damals zu einem Museum ausgebaut werden und die Bedeutung der Kunst psychisch kranker Menschen dokumentieren. Stattdessen wurde sie 1938 in der NS-Ausstellung »Entartete Kunst« gegen die Kunst der Moderne instrumentalisiert und geriet nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Vergessenheit. Erst von 1980 an wurde die Sammlung restauriert, katalogisiert und der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht – unter Mitarbeit von Johann Kresnik.

Theater und Orchester Heidelberg

Chris Hipkiss at exhibition "Contemporary surrealist drawings Rotterdam" Collection de Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

2012-02-08T12:22:00.002+01:00

Institut Néerlandais
01/03/2012 - 13/05/2012

Le cabinet des estampes du musée Boijmans Van Beuningen à Rotterdam plus de 70 000 feuilles. C’est l’une des plus riches collections de dessins et estampes d’Europe, comportant de remarquables collections partielles de maîtres italiens, allemands, néerlandais et français.

Depuis quelques décennies, le musée met également l’accent sur son fonds d’œuvres contemporaines, et plus particulièrement sur celles émanant d’un état d’esprit surréaliste. Il s’agit donc d’œuvres procédant d’une forme d’imagination automatique, parfois d’une concentration profane, et qui cherchent à créer une vision du monde personnelle.

Ces dessins contemporains jettent un pont vers le noyau de la collection de tableaux surréalistes du musée, qui est certes restreinte mais admirable, et qui comporte des toiles célèbres de Dali et Magritte ainsi que de membres du cercle parisien d’André Breton. Le musée ne recule pas devant la collection d’un bloc représentatif d’un artiste spécifique ni devant l’acquisition de dessins de (très) grands formats. Il s’oriente aussi largement au-delà des frontières néerlandaises.

Cette collection réunit environ 70 œuvres de dessinateurs-nés tels qu’Oscar de las Flores (Mexique), Peter Feiler (Allemagne), Ewoud van Rijn (Pays-Bas), Charles Avery (Angleterre), Charlie Roberts (USA), Ronald Cornelissen (Pays-Bas), Elmar Trenkwalder (Autriche), Paul van der Eerden (Pays-Bas), ManfreDu Schu (Autriche), Hans de Wit (Pays-Bas), Jason Fox (USA), Robert McNally ( Angleterre), Paul Noble (Angleterre), Trenton Doyle Hancock (USA), Chris Hipkiss (Angleterre), Krijn de Koning (Pays-Bas), Kinke Kooi (Pays-Bas).
L’occasion de montrer à quel point le dessin est une discipline contemporaine active et séduisante.

Henry Taylor showing at MOMA PS1

2012-02-08T12:11:00.003+01:00

to be seen till 9. April 2012

MoMa PS1

Henry Taylor - New York - "Meine Arbeit, das bin ich." im art Magazin
Politische Porträtstudien und Installationen: Henry Taylor wurde mit abstrakten Porträtstudien bekannt, in denen er sich mit Menschen und Ereignissen aus seinem direkten Lebensumfeld beschäftigt. Mittlerweile versucht er sich auch an Installationen aus gefundenen Objekten, um sich weiterzuentwickeln...

Abb.: Courtesy the artist and Untitled, New York. © 2011 Henry Taylor

ADEMEIT Exhbition and Film by Michael Bauer & Marcus Werner Hed at Galleria Norma Mangione in Turin

2012-01-31T19:57:00.003+01:00

Exhibition from 2 February – 10 March 2012
Over a period of more than twenty years Horst Ademeit (1937-2010) built up an archive of thousands of photographs and texts. Although he considered himself an artist, Ademeit documented the impact of cold rays – radiations that he considered a health hazard and a potential threat – with no particular artististic intent. To do so he used
measuring instruments and, in the margins of his Polaroid photos he meticulously noted down the circumstances, dates, and descriptions, which became increasingly cramped over the years.
His photographs are divided into two groups: 6006 numbered “daily photos”, taken each day in his apartment, and “observation photos” taken in the Düsseldorf district where he lived.

The exhibition will show selections from both series and the film Ademeit (2010) will be screened. Directed by the artist Michael Bauer and the director Marcus Werner Hed, the film was produced by Punderson Gardens.

This documentary-portrait is a poignant journey into the work and life of Horst Ademeit, with an in-depth interview, an exploration of the places he lived in and which appear in his photographs, and his own interpretation of them.

The way Ademeit conveys aspects of time and biography allow comparisons with conceptual artists such as Hanne Darboven, On Kawara, and Roman Opalka. And he shows how it is customary in art to find an openness to non-official scientific theories and to personal obsessions. But together with his radically systematic nature and
unparalleled perseverance, the most interesting thing is that, as he himself declared, his method was an activity that kept him alive, and an objective reality through which he was able to counter invisible, subjective forces.

Norma Mangione Gallery

"Darkness is a Space", Evgen Bavčar at Museo di Roma in Trastevere

2012-01-29T19:14:00.003+01:00

A selection of more than fifty shots by one of the most talented photographers: Evgen Bavčar. The pictures by the blind Slovenian artist, philosopher and photographer, are evocative visions of space, lights, shapes and smells of childhood, snapshots of tactile and sensory perceptions captured by his daring and poetic inner eye. Evgen Bavčar teaches us how to “see” from another perspective.

Evgen was born in Lokavec, Slovenia, (a small city near the Italian border, in a country that was then called Yugoslavia), in 1946. And for the first 11 years of his life, everything was fine: he played with his little sister, he went to regular school, and did what normal children in his native country did. But one day, while playing in the woods, he was speared in the left eye by a branch. Doctors couldn’t repair the damage, and they were forced to remove the eye, and replace it with prosthesis. A few months later, he lost his other eye while handling a mine detonator, and was hospitalized on and off for the following two years. Nevertheless, he was lucky in his bad luck; shrapnel had planted itself in his prosthesis. If he had still had had a real left eye, the shrapnel would have gone through the eye, and into his brain.
Two years of rehabilitation later, Evgen was sent to a school for the blind in Ljubjana, to complete his education. And it was at that school that his life changed, (even though he wouldn’t notice it until about 25 years later.)
In 1962, at age 16, Evgen got hold of a camera, in order to take a picture of his then-girlfriend.
As he pressed the shutter, he realized that, even though he would never see exactly what his photos looked like, he was a great photographer. But he knew also that he would never be able to make a living out of it; so he took courses at the University of Ljubljana, in order to become a telephone switchboard operator. He graduated in 1963, and found a job at a local switchboard office.
But a few years later, he felt this wasn’t a job for him anymore; and so in 1969, he returned to the University of Ljubjana.
He graduated in 1972, and then went to study philosophy at the Universite de Paris 1, the Sorbonne, where he graduated in 1975. The following year, he started work at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, (French equivalent of the National Research Council), as a temporary worker. He still works there today

Museo di Roma in Trastevere
19 January - 25 March 2012

In Memory of Karl Junker who died 100 years ago today

2012-01-26T09:45:00.002+01:00

Zdenek Kosek at Palais de Tokyo in Paris

2012-01-26T09:43:00.001+01:00

ZdenekKosek’s works will be shown at the inaugural exhibition of the new Palais de Tokyo in April 2012.

As part of its collaboration with guest curators, Palais de Tokyo has invited Bruno Decharme, abcd founder, and Barbara Safarova, its president, to present an exhibition of Zdenek Kosek, a Czech artist with whom abcd has collaborated closely from 2003, thus contributing to the recognition of this exceptional oeuvre.

CHRIS HIPKISS AND ROBYN O'NEIL Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan (WI) January 22–April 29

2012-01-26T09:37:00.002+01:00

Robyn O’Neil (CA) creates sweeping narrative drawings in graphite on a large scale—some as large as five feet tall by fourteen feet wide. For eight years, O'Neil developed a narrative series of drawings depicting an epic drama of weather, wildlife, and the human race.

Each installment follows an environment in flux, navigated by tribes of men in sweat suits and white tennis shoes struggling to survive against dominant natural forces. Meant to represent the everyman, these figures appear woefully out of place in their overwhelming and raw environment. Throughout the series, O’Neil suggests that their survival is questionable. Over the course of this entire account, her drawing techniques stretch and weave in response to the changing moods in each scene, from the high-contrast, hard-lined snowscapes of the earlier works to the smudgy overcast skies and murky seas in later works.

Chris Hipkiss, a British artist living in France, also works in graphite and makes large-scale, incredibly intricate images of a barely recognizable future world. For several decades, Hipkiss has been developing an epic tale in which mutated humans negotiate a threatening and unruly—and equally mutated—landscape. In contrast to O’Neil’s remote and barren corners of the planet, Hipkiss focuses on cultivated gardens and cityscapes that appear to grow out of control in spite of their seemingly rigid structures. While O'Neil’s protagonists are track-suited men, Hipkiss's scenes are dominated by androgynes attempting to control, survive, and sometimes merge with their surroundings.

Both artists’ work—the tri-paneled scenes by O’Neil and the vast scrolls by Hipkiss that stretch up to 35 feet—recall the layered narratives and complex landscapes of Northern Renaissance painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Similarly depicting roiling events of biblical proportions, Hipkiss and O’Neil allude to contemporary feelings of alienation and unease over a rapidly changing and increasingly volatile environment through the perilous scenarios they illustrate.

J.B. Murray: Writing in an Unknown Tongue: Reading Through the Water

2012-01-26T09:33:00.002+01:00

John Bunion (J. B.) Murray (1908-1988) was a farmer who lived in rural Glascock County, Georgia, near the community of Mitchel. When he was approximately seventy years of age, believing he had experienced a vision from God, he began writing a non discursive script on adding machine tape, wall board, and stationery. He described it as "the language of the Holy Spirit, direct from God" and interpreted it using a bottle of water as a focusing device. In the last ten years of his life he made over a thousand paintings, introducing the script into fields of color and adding figures that represent "the evil people; the ones that are dry tongued, the one's that don't know God". Murray's works are exhibited throughout the world and he is represented in collections in Japan, Switzerland, France, and the United States.
See the filmmaker Judith McWillie's site on at http://art.uga.edu/lessonsandchants/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjJGl1MGoMs&mid=56

New Book about August Walla by Johann Feilacher Weltallende

2012-01-26T09:29:00.001+01:00

Weltallende:

das Monumentalwerk zu Leben und Schaffen eines Künstlers. August Walla ist einer der weltweit bekanntesten Künstler der Art Brut. Sein ganzes Leben war ein langer Prozess des Schaffens. Das künstlerische Werk, das dabei weitgehend unabhängig entstanden ist, ist völlig eigenständig und zugleich unglaublich vielgestaltig. Die groß angelegte Monographie, die hier nun in vier Bänden vorliegt, trägt dieser Vielseitigkeit Rechnung. Sie beinhaltet Reproduktionen seiner Werke, Texte und Dokumente zu seinem Leben, zu Wallas Aktionismus, seiner Fotografie und Environmental Art, Faksimiles seiner Briefe, seiner Schriften und Zeichenblöcke. Texte von Peter Weiermair, Gerhard Roth, Nina Katschnig, Margit Zuckriegl, Silvia Aigner und Helmut Zambo ergänzen das monumentale Werk.
Über den Autor
August Alois Walla, 1936 geboren, wurde von seiner Mutter als Mädchen erzogen, damit ihm der Kriegseinsatz erspart bleibe. In der Rückschau auf seine Kindheit erklärte er, von den Besatzern zu einem russischen Knaben umoperiert worden zu sein. Walla begann schon in seiner Jugend künstlerisch zu arbeiten. Er zeichnete, malte, fotografierte, war Kalligraph und Lettrist und gestaltete seine Umgebung, indem er Häuser, Straßen und Bäume beschriftete. Ab 1983 lebte und arbeitete Walla im Haus der Künstler in Gugging. Er starb dort am 7. Juli 2001.

LAFFOLEY is critic's pick in the December-issue of ARTFORUM

2011-12-08T17:21:00.003+01:00

Paul Laffoley, The Orgone Motor, 1981, oil, acrylic, vinyl lettering on canvas,

Paul Laffoley
"secret universe"
HAMBURGER BAHNHOF

September 4, 2011–March 4, 2012

The term post-critical has been thrown around in recent years to describe the ideals of hybridity and inclusivity governing much contemporary art. In this context, the exclusive category of “outsider artist” appears antiquated and counterproductive. Reflecting on this contemporary scenario, curators Udo Kittelmann and Claudia Dichter initiated a project space in Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof dedicated to artists who have been largely excluded from the mainstream art world. In the second exhibition in their program, titled “Secret Universe II,” the forty-year career of the Boston-based artist and architect Paul Laffoley is granted reassessment. Featuring over thirty paintings and prints comprising dense interplays between philosophical texts, mystical diagrams, and historical references, Laffoley’s superb draftsmanship frames his paranoid and hyperactive assessments of how history interacts with and constructs the future.

Combining a Conceptualist sensibility with New Age illustration techniques, Laffoley’s works reveal his engrossment in the alternative realities and lifestyles synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s. His paintings evoke a Philip K. Dick–esque world where history, psychosis, and science fiction come together in ways that are simultaneously thought-provoking, entertaining, and, frankly, weird. Aligning his artistic practice with historical figures from R. Buckminster Fuller to Heraclitus, Laffoley gives an architectural schema to speculative notions and mysterious historical forms, tackling subjects as diverse as kabbalah, the shroud of Turin, quantum theory, cosmogenesis, the work of Wilhelm Reich, and the philosophy of Lucretius. His unconventional theories are delicately spelled out with adhesive lettering on the surfaces of his paintings, conveying his esoteric beliefs and giving the exhibition its legibly driven character. Yet the innovative pictorial arrangements of works such as The Orgone Motor, 1981, and The Eloptic Nohmagraphon, 1989, are often more captivating than the theories themselves. The exhibition provides an engaging introduction to Laffoley’s fascinating career, and exemplifies the move in contemporary art to abolish “outsider” status.

Wes Hill, ARTFORUM, 12/2012

Michael Patterson-Carver at NADA Art Fair

2011-11-23T16:39:00.000+01:00

Michael Patterson-Carver

December 1–4, 2011

Solo presentation in collaboration with Sorry We're Closed (Brussels) and Laurel Gitlen (New York)

Deauville Beach Resort
6701 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, FL

www.newartdealers.org

Horst Ademeit at NADA Art Fair, Miami

2011-11-23T16:23:00.005+01:00

Horst Ademeit, untitled, undated, 11 x 9 cm, mixed media on Polaroid
© Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

Horst Ademeit will be showing at NADA Art Fair!
DECEMBER 1 – 4, 2011

VISIT
WHITE COLUMNS + CREATIVE GROWTH'S BOOTHS
AT THE 2011 NADA ART FAIR, MIAMI

WHITE COLUMNS WILL BE EXHIBITING
WORKS BY:

HORST ADEMEIT
JASON BRINKERHOFF
JEFF FUNNELL
JOHN HILTUNEN
JADRANKA KOSORCIC
ELLA KRUGLYANSKAYA
DANIEL RIOS RODRIGUEZ
BERRY VAN BOEKEL

EDITIONS BY:
RICCI ALBENDA
DAN COLEN
ANNE COLLIER
MARTIN CREED
SIMON EVANS
ELLA KRUGLYANSKAYA
ADAM MCEWEN

CREATIVE GROWTH ART CENTER WILL BE SHOWING
WORKS BY:

David Albertsen
Terri Bowden
John Hiltunen
Franna Lusson
Dwight Mackintosh
Dan Miller
Aurie Ramirez
Judith Scott
William Scott
Gerone Spruill
William Tyler
Valerie Tribble
Merritt Wallace

www.whitecolumns.org
www.creativegrowth.org

Coming-up at Prinzhorn Collection: Prinzhorn's Book

2011-11-18T12:36:00.000+01:00

The cover of one of Oskar Voll's books © Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

Prinzhorn's Books

8 December 2011 – 5 February 2012

In 1922, Hans Prinzhorn published "Artistry of the Mentally Ill", today a classic, which has been reissued regularly until today: the 7th edition was published this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Prinzhorn Museum Collection.

Based on works of art sent from mental institutions all over Germany and collected in Heidelberg 1919-1921, Prinzhorn develops his own theory of expression. In his book, he illustrates his theory using works of art as examples; he introduces his ten "schizophrenic masters" in specific chapters and discusses important issues on the borders of psychiatry and art.

The publication was particularly noticed by national and international artists and people interested in art. A crucial factor in its success was the fact that it was illustrated with 187 images, partly in colour. For the first time, Prinzhorn made a chapter of artistic creativity visible, which previously had scarcely even played a role in psychiatric journals.
The exhibition takes Prinzhorn's selection of works for his publication as a model, and presents his ideas from a historical and critical perspective.

Museum Sammlung Prinzhorn 
Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie Universitätsklinik Heidelberg 
Voßstr. 2 
69115 Heidelberg 
Germany

www.prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de

New Chris Hipkiss show in Cologne

2011-11-12T11:45:00.005+01:00

Chris Hipkiss
"The L.I.E.S"

11.11. - 22.12.2011

"The L.I.E.S" is an acronym of "London In Europe", a fact which, though not a real lie, is a reality accepted with reluctance by some. Wordplay is recurrent in the Hipkiss universe and a formal element essential to the idiosyncratic visual language that shapes the panoramic parallel worlds on the walls. Emblematic is an anarchic-style of hypnotic precision and restraint, intricately repetitive and laying bare an anthropomorphic, post-industrial world populated by mutant cyber-dominas – an army of Hipkiss alter-egos. For over 20 years Chris Hipkiss and Alpha Mason have been working together steadily on an uncompromising visual iconography which is mesmerizing, if not downright visionary. Turning their backs on the British suburban landscape they disliked, they moved to the French countryside in the early 2000s shortly after 9/11. The prolific body of Hipkiss-work is the result of a symbiotic interplay between two individuals, two co-conspirators in a creative process shaped by a relationship and its themes and the continuous exchange of ideas and techniques.

Self-reflexive and innovative, the works shown here lays bare the very processes of creation behind the concept of "The L.I.E.S.", allowing the viewer to catch a glimpse at the potential of revisiting and recreating landscapes. The exhibition is the culmination of a year's work and a mock-up of a museum show. It is precisely in the dialectic with the exhibition space that "The L.I.E.S" exposes the reinvented possibilities of large-format Hipkiss works which a restricted gallery space can only hope to allude to. The current body of work also highlights a fact often forgotten: that the drawings are not about repetitive detail drawn by an obsessive loner in seclusion, but about landscape, life and the world around us. Hipkiss work is represented in several collections such as the Collection Antoine de Galbert (Paris), the Cindy Sherman Collection (New York), the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI).

The show is on until 22. December at Galerie Susanne Zander in Cologne
www.galerie-susanne-zander.com

George Widener at JMK Arts Center (WI)

2011-11-07T16:48:00.002+01:00

George Widener at John Michael Kohler Arts Center
"Hiding Places: Memory in the Arts"

through December 2011

Memory is embedded in everything around us—in our culture, beliefs, possessions, relationships—it is a central component of human nature. Memory’s reach can be lifelong or fleeting. We define ourselves through memory, yet it can deceive us when we are least prepared. We continually search for new and inventive ways to keep memory alive: creating, preserving, and sharing memories through Internet databases, oral and written accounts, and visual records. All of this is in an attempt to keep memory out of the mind’s deep hiding places—to master time, hang on to things we no longer possess, and share recollections we hold dear. Many fear losing their memory, while others long to forget.

Hiding Places will draw on this complex and fascinating topic, breaking new ground in cross pollinated programming and engaging limitless audiences. The memory project will serve as a foundation for hosting intergenerational exchange, fostering new thinking about the aging process, finding new ways to apprehend and approach the Autism spectrum, examining the formation of personal and shared memories, and much more.

Because memory is a broad and inclusive topic, it is divided into four thematic components. Click on the names to view each component: From Memory, Holding Memory, Forget Memory, and Shared Memory.

The exhibition and accompanying book will delve deeply into each of the four areas. Artists involved in other programming areas—Performing Arts, Connecting Communities, and Education—will dovetail with the four components in various ways. The profusely illustrated book will include original writings by the exhibition’s curators and prominent scholars with expertise in savant syndrome, age and community, American culture, and art history.

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
608 New York Avenue
Sheboygan, WI 53081
P 920.458.6144
F 920.458.4473
www.jmkac.org

Secret Universe 02: Paul Laffoley

2011-11-03T17:39:00.001+01:00

Secret Universe 02:
Paul Laffoley

November 4, 2011 - March 4, 2012

Where can a secret still exist, if it’s exhibited in the public space of a museum? Does it lie in what is shown, in the conditions under which it originated, in the effect it has? It lies in all of the above. Secret Universe presents individual artistic positions that cannot be branded with any of the labels commonly used in the art world and do not follow a contemporary discourse, yet employ all of the strategies of contemporary art. With the series, secret universe, Hamburger Bahnhoff-Museum fur Gegenwart-Berlin is opening a project area in the museum’s eastern wing for a period of three years, which will present works of art that give insights into fascinating worlds of potentiality, as well as offering complex visual narratives.

Curated by Claudia Dichter und Udo Kittelmann.
Publication by Verlag der Buchhandlung: Walter Konig.

Hamburger Bahnhof
Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof
Invalidenstr. 50 - 51
10557 Berlin

www.hamburgerbahnhof.de

THE KENO TWINS 5 at Colazione in Barriera, Turin

2011-11-03T14:13:00.003+01:00

Sava Sekulić , untitled, undated, oil on wood, 36 x 41 cm

THE KENO TWINS 5
curated by Michael Bauer
From 4. November - 26. November 2011

“Colazione in Barriera”, in his fifth edition, is an appointment that every year takes place by hosting important contemporary art exhibitions during Artissima, the art fair of Turin.
This year Barriera hosts The Keno Twins 5, a show curated by Michael Bauer, who on this occasion has selected more than sixty works, including drawings, sculptures, photographs, and paintings made by thirty-eight artists of different ages and origins.
The idea behind the exhibition is to shed light on the possible affinities between apparently very different works and, as the artist explains, to trace out ‘hidden links, like surreptitious handshakes, in order to form a club that members do not even realise they belong to.’
The selection of works reveals Michael Bauer’s personal interest in independent research that is capable of inventing new worlds and private mythologies, and in obsessions that become forms of art.

‘The Keno Twins’ is a travelling exhibition project that acquires new forms and shapes at each stop. After being shown in Cologne and Esslingen (Villa Merkel), ‘The Keno Twins’ has now found space at Barriera, Turin, for its fifth event.

Keno Twins features:
Horst Ademeit, Francesco Barocco, Michael Bauer, Georg Bauer, Scott Calhoun, Steven Claydon, Michaela Eichwald, Frank Haines, Charlie Hammond, John Hiltunen, Chris Hipkiss, Paul Humphrey, Aurel Iselstöger, Erwin Kneihsl, Fabian Marti, David Noonan, Dietrich Orth, Michail Paule, Stefanie Popp, Aurie Ramirez, Alan Reid, Salvo, Sava Sekulic, Renee So, Ghédalia Tazartès, Miroslav Tichy, Mark van Yetter, Oskar Voll, August Walla, George Widener, Agatha Wojciechowski.

Michael Bauer was born in Erkelenz (Germany) in 1973 and lives in New York. On 2011 he had a solo show as well as an exhibition that he himself curated at Villa Merkel, Esslingen. In 2009 he had a solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; in 2007 he had solo shows at the Kunstverein in Bonn and at the Städtische Galerie in Delmenhorst. He works with Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; Norma Mangione, Turin; Lisa Cooley, New York.

www.associazionebarriera.com

PAUL LAFFOLEY - New "secret universe" publication out now!

2011-10-27T16:05:00.005+02:00

Verlag Walther König - Paul Laffoley: Secret Universe 2

www.buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de

EUR 24,80

Paul Laffoley hat Kunstgeschichte, klassische Geschichte, Philosophie und Architektur studiert, bei den Architekten Frederick Kiesler und Minoru Yamasaki in New York gearbeitet und für Andy Warhol nachts das Fernsehprogramm durchgeschaut. Seit Mitte der 1960er-Jahre setzt er sich in seinen Gemälden und Papierarbeiten mit komplexen Theorien zu Philosophie, Anthroposophie und naturwissenschaftlichen Themen auseinander. Er destilliert das Wissen von so unterschiedlichen Geistern wie Richard Buckminster Fuller, Goethe, William Blake oder C.G. Jung und entwickelt fantastische Theorien über Zeitreisen, schwarze Löcher oder mathematische Fragen zur 4. und 5. Dimension. Seine oftmals stark farbigen, mit Schrifteinheiten versehenen Arbeiten sind gekennzeichnet von einer technisch-geometrischen Formensprache, gepaart mit Einflüssen aus Spiritualität und Science-Fiction. In sogenannten "thoughtforms" legt er seine Überlegungen und geistigen Einflüsse zu jedem Werk schriftlich nieder. Die Publikation begleitet die erste Einzelausstellung Paul Laffoleys in Europa.

Since the mid-1960s, Paul Laffoley has grappled with complex theories on paper. He distils the wisdom from such varied thinkers as Richard Buckminster Fuller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Blake and C.G. Jung, developing visionary theories about time travel, black holes and mathematical questions on the forth and fifth dimensions. He uses "thoughtforms" to record to records his ideas about and intellectual influences in his works.

Laffoley: Secret Universe II, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2011 LAFFOLEY, PAUL - BERLIN, HAMBURGER BAHNHOF - Bestell-Nr: 1468822, ISBN: 978-3-86335-088-8, EUR 24,80

ADEMEIT Film by Marcus Werner Hed & Michael Bauer in London

2011-10-12T16:19:00.003+02:00

the gallery sketch
ADEMEIT Marcus Werner Hed & Michael Bauer
1 October to 19 November 2011

Frieze VIP Reception Saturday 15 October, 10am-11.30am
sketch presents ADEMEIT by Marcus Werner Hed and Michael Bauer, a film-portrait of Horst Ademeit that explores his life's research into 'cold-rays'.
Ademeit documented his research over many years through numerous intricately notated Polaroid photographs. Following an exhibition of his work at Galerie Susanne Zander in Cologne in 2009, filmmaker Marcus Werner Hed and artist Michael Bauer undertook extensive interviews with him to create a contemplative and celebratory film that explores the diversity of human perception.

Michael Bauer (b.1973, lives and works in Cologne) is an artist and co-director of Foundation of BROTHERSLASHER, Cologne. Bauer has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally and recent solo shows include K-Hole, Villa Merkel, Essling; The Summer I started Collecting Knives, Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York and Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin; Euro Savage (with Charlie Hammond), Linn Luhn, Cologne !Golden Gong (with Stefanie Popp), Marquis Dance Hall, Istanbul; Anthem, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Legion Picknick, HOTEL, London; French Meat, Belgian Meat, Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; Basho's Friends, Jack Hanley, San Francisco; Basho's Bar, Kunstverein Bonn, Bonn.
Marcus Werner Hed is a London based filmmaker whose films have been screened in festivals and galleries world-wide. He founded Pundersons Gardens with Jeremy Valender in 2006 and has produced numerous artists-films by Wolfgang Tillmans, Daria Martin and Emily Wardill among others. TAZARTES, his new film, co-directed with Michael Bauer, about avant garde singer Ghedalia Tazartes is currently in production as well as Arctic Dreams, a feature length documentary about workers living in the oil and gas industries in the Arctic.
Opening Times - Mon-Sat, 10am-5pm Kindly supported by Peroni & Marquis Vodka
For high resolution images or further details please contact Victoria Brooks victoriab@sketch.uk.com/ +44 7968 477 636
sketch 9 Conduit Street London W1S 2XG

Objet Secret, Judith Scott in Paris

2011-10-12T15:59:00.004+02:00

Objet Secret
Judith Scott

12. Oktober - 18 Dezember, 2011
Eröffnung: 11. Oktober 18h - 21h
Collège des Bernardins 18 - 24 rue de Poissy 75005 Paris

Begleitend zur Ausstellung finden im College of Bernardine zwei Vorträge statt:
17. Oktober - 20 - 22 Uhr « A la frontière de l’art : les sculptures de Judith Scott ? » mit Bruno Decharme, Tom DiMaria und Barbara Safarova

9 November - 20 - 22 Uhr « L’art de la dissimulation : la notion de ‘secret’ dans l’œuvre de Judith Scott » Mit Jerome Alexander, Bertrand und Jean de Loisy Hell

Secret Universe II. Paul Laffoley at Hamburger Bahnhof

2011-10-11T22:45:00.003+02:00

secret universe II. Paul Laffoley
4 November 2011 - 4 March 2012

In an exhibition series entitled secret universe, the Hamburger Bahnhof is dedicating itself to artists who have largely gone unnoticed within the established art discourse and will feature them in monographic projects.

The second exhibition in this series presents works by the American artist and architect Paul Laffoley (*1940). Since the mid-1960s, Laffoley has confronted scientific, philosophical and spiritual matters in his work with equal verve. He studied art history, history, philosophy and architecture and spent more than 38 years living in a one-room apartment in Boston, which he dubbed the 'Boston Visionary Cell'. He is influenced in his work by his collaboration with the visionary architect Frederick Kiesler, as well as by the theories of Buckminster Fuller and C.G. Jung and the literature of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and William Blake. Another factor that has left a mark on his work is the fact that Laffoley was once engaged by Andy Warhol to watch television through the night on his behalf so that he could keep abreast of events.

In his mostly large-scale works on canvas, Paul Laffoley devises complex theories and fantastical scenarios on time travel, the 4th or 5th dimension and cosmological and astrological questions. In accomplishing this, he creates diagrams, display charts or rigidly geometrically structured compositions in which text and image are woven together to form a whole. Underlying his elaborately structured paintings are multi-layered reflections, covering several disciplines at once, which he first lays down in writing before transposing them to a pictorial form. Since 1966, his work has been presented in numerous solo and group shows in the USA, South America and Europe. Today's exhibition in the Hamburger Bahnhof is the first solo show in Europe of the artist who still lives in Boston.

The 'secret universe' series has been made possible by the 'About Change, Stiftung'.

Curated by Claudia Dichter und Udo Kittelmann

Image: Mind Body Alpha, 1989 © Private Collection courtesy of Kent Fine Art, New York

Symposium in Berlin 14. / 15.10.

2011-10-11T22:30:00.006+02:00

Symposium: KunstAußenseiterKunst // 14. & 15. Oktober 2011, Berlin Die Faszination für künstlerische Werke von Autodidakten, seit 1972 oft »Outsider Art« oder »Außenseiterkunst« genannt, durchzieht das gesamte 20. Jahrhundert und hält bis heute an. In der Nachfolge von Hans Prinzhorn und Jean Dubuffet verteidigten viele Fürsprecher sie gegen eine Charakterisierung als angeblich weniger authentische professionelle Ausstellungskunst. Die Tagung geht der Frage nach, welche Bedeutung Outsider Art für die Kunst und den Kunstbetrieb heute hat.
Susanne Zander nimmt Samstag, den 15.10 um 15.30 Uhr an der Podiumsdiskussion über das Thema "Außenseiterkunst in Berlin" teil. Weitere Sprecher: Udo Kittelmann, Leonie Baumann, Alexandra von Gersdorff-Bultmann, Uwe Herrmann, Matthias Kanter
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Karin Dannecker

Symposium Fr., 14. und Sa., 15. Oktober 2011
Hochschule für Musik „Hanns Eisler“ Neuer Marstall, Krönungskutschensaal Schlossplatz 7, 10178 Berlin

Royal Robertson at White Columns / New York

2011-10-11T22:00:00.004+02:00

Image Copyright by White Columns

Gallery Prophet Royal Robertson: NO PROUD BASTARDS
at White Columns
Oct. 21 - Nov. 19, 2011

Curated by Erik Parker and Scott Ogden Prophet Royal Robertson (1931-1997), originally a sign painter by trade, covered every inch of his Baldwin, Louisiana home and yard with apocalyptic hand-made signs and paintings. Visitors and passersby alike were greeted with large, weather-beaten signs warning, “All Crazy Persons Keep Off Lot” and “No Divorced Whores Allowed”. However once you got past these foreboding walls of language, an entirely different world opened up inside his small home. Shrines dedicated to his both beloved and despised ex-wife, Adell, were pushed up against walls that were lined floor to ceiling with poster board renderings of future cities, space autos, couples engaged in sex, weaponry, and calendars chronicling his daily woes and visions. Referencing sources as disparate as the Bible, science fiction magazines, pornography, and cheap tabloid newspapers, his work managed to graphically illustrate the daily concerns that occupied his mind, both real and imagined. More than a reclusive, self-proclaimed prophet, Royal believed himself to be a “Libra Artist, Mystic, Psychic, Lord, and Saint.” He lived in a world where daily visions blended seamlessly into a waking life spent obsessively documenting his otherworldly adventures. The resulting drawings and writings provide direct access into the mind of an evidently troubled, yet visionary individual who perhaps unintentionally created some of the most extraordinary ‘Pop’ art of the 20th Century.

Scott Ogden and Erik Parker Prophet Royal Robertson NO PROUD BASTARDS is curated by NY-based artists Scott Ogden and Erik Parker. In 1996 Odgen and Parker visited Royal Robertson in his Baldwin home whilst they were studying art at The University of Texas at Austin. This exhibition will be the first in-depth consideration of Royal Robertson’s work to be held in New York City.

White Coumns,
320 West 13th Street
(Enter on Horatio Street, between Hudson and 8th Avenue)
New York, NY 10014
212 924 4212
212 645 4764 Fax

WE MAKE VERSIONS at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (D) presents Chris Hipkiss

2011-10-04T17:03:00.004+02:00

Chris Hipkiss, "A Sulk Exit" (2007), mixed media on papaer, 180 x 112cm

8. October – 23. December 2011

Chris Hipkiss, Edith Dekyndt, Hermann Finsterlin, Carla Guagliardi, Ilana Halperin, Friedrich Kiesler, Emma Kunz, Paul Laffoley, Susan McWilliam, Rune Mields, Gyan Panchal, Michael Pfisterer, Kerstin Stoll, Nina Tobien, Gitte Villesen

“In order to discover laws it is necessary to create them. The recognition of structures relies to a great extent on inventing and establishing them. Perception and creation go hand in hand.” (Nelson Goodman, 1978).

“We Make Versions“ presents a variety of different design models and “visionary” positions in art, science and related disciplines. The more than 10 international artists represented in the exhibition deal with the alternating relationship between knowledge gain and subjectivity: Chris Hipkiss' (*1964) highly detailed visionary landscapes are an essay on the boundaries of technology and man and posess a dystopic quality of terrifying fascination; "Universal Research of Subjectivity”, a group project that reflects on constants in artistic work, is only one example for Edith Dekyndt’s (*1960) occupation with individual and global positions in society. Text, music, air, video, neon light—everyday materials—all serve as variables in her poetic installations, which explore the boundaries of art, science and reality. Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973), whose designs form a strong contrast to the clear line found in Bauhaus design, is considered to be a visionary architect. No project by Finsterlin has ever been realized, however there are numerous fantastic-surreal looking drawings and playful models made of wood, which document Finsterlin’s visions of architecture. The works by Paul Laffoley (*1940) seem to operate in a context that goes far beyond the reality portrayed by natural science. Using meticulously drawn diagrams and illustrative material, he constructs complex models of knowledge and presents his theories on time travel and black holes as well as the fourth and fifth dimension.

The title “We Make Versions” refers to a parallel and equally-weighted approach to different “versions” or models of representation and narration, with view to their awareness-raising and productive abilities. With reference to Goodman’s book “Ways of Worldmaking”, the multifaceted possibilities for describing the world are each allowed their own respective truth claim. It is about both the examination of awareness-raising practices, apparatuses and methods of presentation as well as the subjective, productive and visionary potential of designs that attempt to perceive the complex relationships and phenomena in a descriptive way. The approach to the production of knowledge in particular, which is not limited to just one discipline, will play an important role in the exhibition because it contains the potential to generate something new and meaningful. In this context the Westfälische Kunstverein is collaborating with the Academy of Fine Arts Münster. The art historian Dr. Anna Lammers will take up this theme in her seminar “Weltmodelle und Erkenntnis in der Kunst” (world models and awareness in art).

For more information click here

The Antone Galbert Collection featuring Chris Hipkiss at me Collector's Room, Berlin

2011-09-30T14:57:00.006+02:00

From October 1, 2011 to January 8, 2012 me Collectors Room Berlin is presenting the collection of Antoine de Galbert.

Antoine de Galbert has been collecting contemporary art since 1987 with the conscious intent of circumventing the mainstream and certain trends. Folk art, “art brut” and religious objects complete his collection of contemporary works. An interest in motifs of transience and sexuality relate Antoine de Galbert to Essen-based collector Thomas Olbricht; it is in his exhibition venue in Berlin that parts of de Galbert’s collection are now being shown. Antoine de Galbert will be introducing his Berlin audience to works by artists living and working in France, providing an insight into the French art scene (Julien Berthier, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Claire Fontaine, Damien Deroubaix, Mathieu Pernot, Stéphane Thidet …) Concurrent with the exhibition in Berlin, La Maison Rouge in Paris is in turn presenting Thomas Olbricht’s collection. In 2004, Antoine de Galbert opened his own exhibition venue—in parallel to his La Maison Rouge collection activities—where he has been showing three to twelve exhibitions a year ever since. Only rarely does he exhibit works from his own collection. Solo and group exhibitions alternate and are complemented by the presentation of one other private collection each year.

List of artists:
Gilles Barbier, Julien Berthier, Olivier Blanckart, Pierre-Yves Bohm, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Mircea Cantor, Claire Fontaine, Nicolas Darrot, John Davies, Luc Delahaye, Philippe Dereux, Damien Deroubaix, Ernest T, Richard Fauguet, Didier Faustino, Valérie Favre, Dominique Figarella, Elika Hedayat, Chris Hipkiss, Jean-Charles Hue, Jackie Kayser, Bertrand Lavier, Natacha Lesueur, Enrique Marty, Théo Mercier, Nicolas Milhé, François Morellet, Mathieu Pernot, Chantal Petit, Eric Pougeau, François Ribes, Elsa Sahal, Thibault Scemama de Gialluly, Stéphane Thidet, Philippe Thomassin, Barthélémy Toguo, Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille, Henri Ughetto

A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

My Paris - Collection Antoine de Galbert
01.10.2011 to 08.01.2012
me Collectors Room Berlin / Olbricht Foundation
Auguststrasse 68, 10117 Berlin

For more information click here

Gregory L. Blackstock at the Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne

2011-09-29T18:08:00.003+02:00

From September 30, 2011 - February 19, 2012
show opening Fr. 29.09, 6.30pm

Gregory L. Blackstock catalogues the world into pictorial lists. All have in common their clean lines, factual calligraphy and careful grouping dishwasher, Gregory L. Blackstock (1946) is an autistic savant who took up drawing at the age of forty. Currently retired, he lives in Seattle, Washington.

For more in French click here

La Collection de l'Art Brut
11, av. des Bergières
CH - 1004 Lausanne

TIERE - TIERE - TIERE @ Museum Charlotte Zander, Schloss Bönningheim

2011-09-21T14:38:00.006+02:00

TIERE - TIERE - TIERE
zu Lande - zu Wasser - in der Luft
Bilder und Skulpturen Sammlung Charlotte Zander
25.9.2011 - 5.2.2012

Künstler:
A. Bauchant, E. Bödeker, I. Bosilj, A. Bois-Vives, F. Desnos, A. Dietrich, J. Eve, A. Forestier, P. Ghizzardi, A. Hoffmann, O. Jeremic, P. Leonow, J. Lloyd, E. Odenthal, M. Nedjar, K. B. Paletta, A. J. Pietsch, N. Pirosmanaschwili, M. Raffler, A. Sauter, S. Sekulic, M. Skurjeni, W. Teucher, J. Tisnikar, G. Van der Steen, E. Stern, J. Wittlich, S. Wilson, L. Vivin

Eröffnung am Sonntag, den 25. September 2011, 14 Uhr

Begrüßung und Einführung:
Charlotte Zander
Dr. Edmund Haferbeck, PETA Deutschland e.V., Tierschutz

Museum Charlotte Zander
Schloss Bönnigheim
Hauptstr. 15
74357 Bönnigheim
Tel: +49/7143/4226

Öffnungszeiten:
Di-Sa: 11-15 Uhr, So und Feiertag: 11-16 Uhr
www.sammlung-zander.de

Exhibition #4 at The Museum of Everything, London

2011-09-01T12:24:00.005+02:00

From September 2 - October 25th, 2011
Selfridges, London

The Museum of Everything returns on 2 September with its fourth exhibition. This time round, we can expect ‘over two hundred drawings, paintings and sculptures by international contemporary artists for whom creation is not just art, it is language’.

In a departure from previous exhibitions, the new show will not make use of the museum’s usual Primrose Hill venue. Instead, it’s decamping to Selfridges for what’s described as the ‘most expansive art collaboration in the history of the shop’. As well as taking up internal space, the exhibition will also occupy all of the department store’s famous windows. The show will be accompanied by a yet-to-be-announced events programme and the optimistically named Shop of Everything.

Exhibition #4 features hundreds of artworks by new undiscovered artists information on progressive art studios worldwide physical exhibition and online digital exhibition events, talks, screenings of The Films of Everything.

Dan Miller, William Scott, Harald Stoffers, Thomas Beisgen, Katsuhiro Terao, Tomoyuki Shinki, etc

Exhibition #4 runs at Selfridges from 2 September to 25 October.

www.museumofeverything.com

REVIEW "Auf Augenhöhe" - Udo Kittelmann & Matthew Higgs über die Outsider Kunst heute, Süddeutsche Zeitung (30.08.2011)

2011-08-30T11:59:00.007+02:00

"Auf Augenhöhe: Wie soll Outsider Art heute im Museum gezeigt werden - ein Gespräch mit Udo Kittelmann und Matthew Higgs " in SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, Nr.199, S.12 (30.08.2011)

"Outsider Kunst auf Augenhöhe"
Auch die Kunst von Außenseitern gehört gleichberechtigt in die Museen. Diese These vertritt der Direktor der Nationalgalerie Berlin, Udo Kittelmann. In einem Interview der Süddeutschen Zeitung bricht er eine Lanze für die sogenannte "Outsider Art". Es gelte die Grenzen gängiger und konservativer Vorstellungen von Kunst auszuloten. Wie die Kunst selbst sollten auch die Kunstinstitutionen immer in Bewegung bleiben. Auch für die Werke von Außenseitern im Kunstbetrieb müsse Platz sein. Und dabei dürften solche Ausstellungen aber nicht zu einer Freak-Show verkommen. Kittelmann kritisierte, dass zu oft die außergewöhnlichen Lebensläufe oder Krankengeschichten von derartigen Außenseitern in übertriebener Art und Weise präsentiert würden.

(Text© 2011 Deutschlandradio/Kulturnachrichten)

OSTALGIA at the New Museum, New York

2011-08-29T15:07:00.007+02:00

From July 14 - September 25th, 2011

Alexander Lobanov / courtesy of Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

This exhibition takes its title from the German word "Ostalgie", a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Twenty years ago—after the fall of the Berlin Wall—a process of dissolution led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and many other countries that had been united under Communist governments. From the Baltic republics to the Balkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia, entire regions and nations were reconfigured, their constitutions rewritten, their borders redrawn. “Ostalgia” looks at the art produced in and about some of these countries, many of which did not formally exist two decades ago. Mixing private confessions and collective traumas, the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies must negotiate new relationships to history, geography, and ideology. “Ostalgia” brings together the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Many of the works offer a series of reportages on aspects of life and art under Communism and in the new post-Soviet countries. The exhibition pays particular attention to the unique place that artists came to occupy in Socialist countries, acting simultaneously as outcasts, visionaries, and witnesses. Unlike a conventional geographical survey, the exhibition includes works produced by Western European artists who have grappled with the reality and the myth of the East. Some of the preoccupations that unite the artists in “Ostalgia” are a romantic belief in the power of art as a transformative, almost curative agent; an obsession with language; the conception of a new aesthetic of the body; a fascination with the ruins of history as represented by monuments and architectural vestiges; and an understanding of artwork as a form of sentimental documentary that mediates between cultural pressures and individual anxieties.

All images of Alexander Lobanov with courtesy of Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

Combining seminal figures and younger artists, “Ostalgia” does not follow a chronological perspective, establishing instead a series of dialogues between different generations and geographies. Zigzagging across distant cultural landscapes, the exhibition exposes local avant-garde practices and highlights international affinities, which indirectly question the centrality of Western art historical paradigms.

“Ostalgia” is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, with Jarrett Gregory, Assistant Curator. Extended labels by Chris Wiley.

Ostalgia presents: Alexander Lobanov, Phil Collins, Chto Delat?, Ion Grigorescu, Jonas Mekas, Boris Mikhailov, amongst others artists

New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
newmuseum.org

Chris Hipkiss and Agatha Wojciechowsky @ Kunstwerke /Berlin

2011-07-15T15:50:00.010+02:00

Curated by artist Corinne Wasmuht

Die Ausstellungsserie KW69 im Vorderhaus der KW Institute for Contemporary Art versteht sich als ein Dialograum für Künstlerinnen und Künstler, eine Probebühne, in der über den Zeitraum eines Jahres im schnellen Wechsel künstlerische Projekte stattfinden. In der Abfolge der Projekte tauschen die Beteiligten die Rollen, agieren zuerst als Künstler und laden anschließend selbst ein. Das dynamische Wechselspiel ermöglicht unkonventionelle Bezugnahmen, permanente Perspektivverschiebungen und aufeinander aufbauende Annäherungen an die Räume.

The exhibition series KW69—situated in the front building KW Institute for Contemporary Art—provides a space for dialogue for artists, a kind of experimental stage that for one year will be the home to a number of artistic projects in quick succession. Moving on from one project to the next, the participants will shift roles, as the artists exhibiting then invite the next project. This dynamic interplay will enable unconventional points of reference, continuous shifts in perspective, and uses of the exhibition space that refer to and build on one another.
KW69 is conceived as an open cycle of exhibitions, which will only become concrete as the year progresses.

KW69 ist ein offen konzipierter Ausstellungszyklus, der seine konkrete Ausprägung im Laufe des kommenden Jahres erfahren wird.

KW69 #6
by Corinne Wasmuht
28.07. – 28.08.2011
Eröffnung: 27.07.2011, 19 Uhr

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
D-10117 Berlin
Images:
1. Chris Hipkiss, My Faith Blister, Copyright Galerie Susanne Zander Köln
2.Agatha Wojciechowsky ohne Titel, Copyright Galerie Susanne Zander Köln

Outsiders artist ROYAL ROBERTSON artwork featured in Sufjan Stevens' new video

2011-07-15T15:47:00.005+02:00

Outsider artist and self-proclaimed prophet Royal Robertson (1936-1997) is featured as a central inpiration for multiinstrumentalist Sufjan Stevens' artwork and live visuals on the Album Age of Adz.

His latest video to the track "Get Real, Get Right" was recently released and can be viewed here:
http://vimeo.com/25681821

sufjan stevens on wikipedia
royal robertson on wikipedia

Alexander Lobanov @ New Museum / New York

2011-07-15T15:12:00.004+02:00

Ostalgia

This exhibition takes its title from the German word ostalgie, a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Twenty years ago—after the fall of the Berlin Wall—a process of dissolution led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and many other countries that had been united under Communist governments. From the Baltic republics to the Balkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia, entire regions and nations were reconfigured, their constitutions rewritten, their borders redrawn. “Ostalgia” looks at the art produced in and about some of these countries, many of which did not formally exist two decades ago. Mixing private confessions and collective traumas, the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies must negotiate new relationships to history, geography, and ideology. “Ostalgia” brings together the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Many of the works offer a series of reportages on aspects of life and art under Communism and in the new post-Soviet countries. The exhibition pays particular attention to the unique place that artists came to occupy in Socialist countries, acting simultaneously as outcasts, visionaries, and witnesses. Unlike a conventional geographical survey, the exhibition includes works produced by Western European artists who have grappled with the reality and the myth of the East. Some of the preoccupations that unite the artists in “Ostalgia” are a romantic belief in the power of art as a transformative, almost curative agent; an obsession with language; the conception of a new aesthetic of the body; a fascination with the ruins of history as represented by monuments and architectural vestiges; and an understanding of artwork as a form of sentimental documentary that mediates between cultural pressures and individual anxieties. Combining seminal figures and younger artists, “Ostalgia” does not follow a chronological perspective, establishing instead a series of dialogues between different generations and geographies. Zigzagging across distant cultural landscapes, the exhibition exposes local avant-garde practices and highlights international affinities, which indirectly question the centrality of Western art historical paradigms. “Ostalgia” is curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, with Jarrett Gregory, Assistant Curator. Extended labels by Chris Wiley.

Exhibition from 7/6/11 until 9/25/11

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/440/

New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222

New Publication about Horst Ademeit

2011-07-15T14:56:00.007+02:00

Buchhandlung Walther-König - Ademeit: Secret Universe 1

www.buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de

EUR 24,80

Rund 20 Jahre lang (1989-2007) erstellt Horst Ademeit eine Dokumentation über das Vorhandensein von Kältestrahlen, die auf ihn einwirken und ihn beeinflussen. Anhand von Aufzeichnungen, die er fast täglich anfertigt, untersucht und dokumentiert er deren Existenz. "Tagesbilder" nennt er die durchnumerierten, auf dem Küchentisch arrangierten Bilder von Zeitungen, Lebensmitteln und Meßgeräten, die zu Tagesbeginn hergestellt werden und die jeweilige Kältestrahlenbelastung verzeichnen. Diese Bilder beschriftet er eng mit Kommentaren. Es entstehen mehrere Tausend solcherart beschriftete Polaroid-Photos, später auch Digitalphotographien, etliche eng beschriebene Leporello-Kalendarien und etwa 3000 gedrechselte Kügelchen aus verschiedenen Hölzern.*****

Horst Ademeit documented the presence of "cold rays", unseen negative forces, for almost 20 years (1989-2007). The inventory he accumulated and added to almost every day during this period was his attempt to study them: thousands of Polaroid and digital photographs, several leporello notebooks full of meticulously logged data and around 3,000 small spheres made of various kinds of wood. At the beginning of each day he also produced a "Tagesbild" (picture of the day), numbered images of newspapers, groceries and measuring instruments arranged on the kitchen table, which were intended to record the respective cold ray exposure.

Ademeit: Secret Universe I Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König 2011 ADEMEIT, HORST - BERLIN, HAMBURGER BAHNHOF - Bestell-Nr: 1462861 ISBN: 978-3-86560-997-7 EUR 24,80

Detektiv des Alltags

2011-07-13T12:10:00.010+02:00

von Matthias Reichelt

Veröffentlicht im Feuilleton der Tageszeitung "Junge Welt" (08.07.2011) in redigierter Fassung unter dem Titel "Eine Unterkühlung - Kunst als empirische Sozialforschung: Eine Ausstellung in Berlin"
online: http://www.jungewelt.de/2011/07-08/036.php

Die Welt ist kompliziert, wird von Tag zu Tag undurchsichtiger und ist für viele Menschen kaum mehr zu verstehen. Es bedarf einer genauen Beobachtungsgabe, eines starken Willens zur Erkenntnis und Fleiß zur kontinuierlichen Dokumentation, um den Geheimnissen des Alltags auf die Spur zu kommen. Das klingt nach Wissenschaft, nach Empirie und in der Tat gibt es Bezüge zu der von Horst Ademeit (1937–2010) in großer Akribie betriebenen Erforschung seiner persönlichen Umwelt. Nachdem Ademeit Ende der 1980er Jahre eine Sozialwohnung im Düsseldorfer Stadtteil Flingern bezogen hatte, wurde er auf verschiedene merkwürdige Phänomene aufmerksam. In nur 14 Jahren dokumentierte der ausgebildete Künstler auf 6006 Polaroids detailliert seine nähere Umgebung und hielt alles fest, was ihm auffällig und registrierenswert erschien. Arglos in der Straße abgestellte Fahrräder oder Einkaufswagen, denkwürdige Schaufensterauslagen, schadhafte Stellen am Haus und zahlreiche Arrangements von Objekten und Messgeräten.

Nach einer Ausbildung als Maler und Anstreicher in den 50er Jahren hatte er als Feinmechaniker gearbeitet, bevor er ab 1964 die Werkkunstschule in Köln besuchte. Kurzzeitig nahm er auch an der Beuys-Klasse in Düsseldorf teil und absolvierte in den 1970er Jahren noch ein Pädagogikstudium, ohne je als Lehrer zu arbeiten. Stattdessen wurde er arbeitslos und besserte seine Sozialhilfe durch Schwarzarbeit mit Renovierungen auf. Eines seiner ersten Polaroids machte Horst Ademeit am 5. Oktober 1990 um15.30 h und kennzeichnete es in der linken Ecke mit „4 e“. Er hielt darauf die Schaufensterauslage des Geschäftes „HAKO“ fest. Auf dem weißen Rand notierte er: „Schadowstr. Düsseldorf/ Auslagen Kompasse! Insgesamt eher Nord als sonstige Ausrichtung laut Leuchtblattziffern.“ Diesen Tagesbildern fügte er immer alle ihm wichtigen Informationen und Beobachtungen hinzu. Sie enthalten Bezüge zu Zeitungsmeldungen, Information über das eigene Befinden sowie die gemessenen Strahlungen. Ademeit entschloss sich, seine für zu niedrig befundene Körper- wie auch die Raumtemperatur in Messungen nachzuweisen und die Ergebnisse festzuhalten. Dafür benötigte er unterschiedliche Messgeräte, die er wiederum im Bild festhielt. Den „Kältestrahlen“ wollte er wissenschaftlich auf den Grund gehen. Seine Rapporte notierte er aufgrund des zunehmenden Textvolumens in immer kleinerer Schrift auf den Polaroids und auch in Faltkalendern. Nach dem Ende der Polaroidtechnik führte er seine fotografischen Untersuchungen in digitalem Format fort und legte dazu Karteikarten an. In der ersten Ausstellung einer von Claudia Dichter und Udo Kittelmann begründeten Reihe „secret universe“ wird dieses konzeptuell geschlossene Werk im Hamburger Bahnhof erstmals in Ansätzen vorgestellt. Die Kölner Galerie Susanne Zander war vor einigen Jahren auf Ademeit aufmerksam geworden und stand lange in persönlichem Kontakt mit dem unter einer Psychose leidenden Künstler, bevor dieser im letzten Jahr an Magenkrebs starb. Gesellschaft und Kunstbetrieb sind immer schnell mit ihren Schubladen zur Endlagerung auffälliger oder als psychopathologisch eingestufter Persönlichkeiten und deren Arbeiten. Sie erhalten das Label „Outsiderkunst“ oder „Art Brut“, die Schublade geht wieder zu und wird nur noch von Leuten geöffnet, die über Geisteskrankheit und Kunst forschen. Das ist nicht nur zu kurz gedacht sondern auch falsch. Denn wo sollte die Grenze gezogen werden, wären von allen gehypten Künstlern die psychischen Krisen und deren Auswirkungen auf die Werke bekannt? Und zum anderen besteht ja das Faszinosum des Systems Kunst darin, dass sich in ihm Gestaltungswille und individueller Ausdruck materialisiert. Es ist ein Abenteuer, eine fremde Welt zu entdecken und zu entschlüsseln. Am Anfang steht vielleicht nur die Faszination für die Beharrlichkeit und den Umfang des Werks. Dann ist die Gestaltung zu entdecken, die formalästhetisch ihre Reize hat. Das Verhältnis von Text zu Bild, die Zunahme des Textvolumens und das darin zum Ausdruck kommende Mitteilungsbedürfnis sowie Ademeits immer dezidierterer Gestaltungswille bei der Nummerierung wecken die Neugier, das komplexe Werk zu durchdringen. In der Ausstellung sind die Polaroids sowohl in Vitrinen wie auch en bloc als massiver Fries an der Wand appliziert. Gerade an Ademeits Arbeit lässt sich ein geschlossenes und nachvollziehbares Dokumentationssystem erkennen, das in seiner Kompaktheit und Konsequenz beeindruckt. Es ist gleichzeitig das Tagebuch eines hypersensiblen Künstlers, in dem sich die Tagesereignisse anhand von Zeitungen und Kommentaren spiegeln. In vielen seiner Polaroids gestaltete er Stillleben aus Messgeräten, Lebensmitteln und anderen Objekten auf Ausgaben von Springers Bild-Zeitung. Im Arrangement ist Ademeits Gespür für den Wahnsinn der medialen Politik erkennbar. Irak-Krieg, Verona Feldbusch und Terrorismus werden zu einem Mahlstrom der Banalisierung vereint.

Übrigens sind Ademeits Ängste vor den Kältestrahlen so falsch nicht. Angesichts aller heutigen Erkenntnisse über Elektrosmog oder schädlicher Dämpfe durch Wärmedämmung an Häusern haben sie einen realen Hintergrund. In einer Broschüre über Baumaterialien hatte er die Angaben mit Skepsis betrachtet und kommentiert. Unter Asbest stand bei Gesundheitsgefährdung: Ungiftig. Ademeit hat es markiert und dahinter lakonisch vermerkt: „Heute giftig“.

Die Ausstellung "Horst Ademeit - secret universe" läuft bis zum 25. September im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Eine begleitende Publikation ist im Verlag Walther König erschienen:
www.buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de

Art brut collectors António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger in the PÚBLICO (22.06.2011)

2011-06-23T16:36:00.003+02:00

Art brut collectors António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger were featured in the Portuguese press with their intent to bring their exquisit art brut collection to Portugal. They now are in search of a museum that is up to the challenge of their unique collection: over 700 works from Henry Darger and Oskar Voll to Foma Jaremtschuck and Augustin Lesage hand-picked for over 40 years.

(Coelho, Alexandra Prado. "Eles querem um museu que nao seja adormecido" in Público, P2 (22.06.2011). S. 4-5.)

all images of artworks © Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

FILM "George Widener" (2008/14') by Bruno Decharme

2011-06-15T17:04:00.005+02:00

In 2008 Bruno Decharme (Collection abcd, Paris) directed a 14' minute documentary film on George Widener. Click here to watch it in full length

For further information on Bruno Decharme:
www.brunodecharme.com

LECTURE George Widener at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne

2011-06-10T16:07:00.017+02:00

Guest Lecture „Time Machine“
George Widener at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne
by invitation of Prof. Mischa Kuball

"Time Machine", 2011, mixed media on paper, 184 x 139 cm

Thursday, 16^th of June 2011, 5 pm

Auditorium, Filzengraben 2, 50676 Cologne, Germany

George Widener (*1962 in Covington, Kentucky)

is a self-taught artist who employs his mathematical calculating capability and his love for numerical puzzles to create art ranging from complex calendars and numerical palindromes to antiquarian landscapes and Asian scrolls. His early fascination with calendars was so intense, that he developed a habit of mentally converting any number he saw into a calendar date. He predicts that some day his art will be enjoyed by super-intelligent machines such as the high-capacity computers under development today. His art “will help make these machines friendlier to us.”

Widener has pursued his interest in numbers, calendar dates, statistics and factual information as far back as his childhood. His personal notebooks with facts and figures have accompanied him throughout the years: through a turbulent childhood; later at eighteen, when working with the military in intelligence in a department shared with the cryptographers and code breakers; during the two years he was enrolled in engineering at the University of Texas, but also in the time after dropping out of university, after countless jobs and in the time following, when living in homeless shelters in a string of American cities. On several occasions, after saving enough money from odd day jobs to buy plane tickets, Widener travelled to European cities, including Amsterdam, London and Berlin, where he slept in public parks or squatted in abandoned buildings. He continued to draw obsessively, withdrawing socially. Only later was he identified as a savant with Asperger Syndrome.

Since 2000 his art has focussed on elaborate large-scale works, which combine drawings of architectural structures with the lists of dates, statistical information and which often integrate calculations from magic squares. The result is a grid of numerical patterns and correlations of detailed numbers inspired by cartography, mathematics and numerology, that seeks to shed light on time and the unfolding of human events and the codification of the systems of chance and historical aribratiness.

Widener's work is presented internationally, most recently in a solo exhibition at Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York, in the group exhibitions „World Transformers“ at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt and „Exhibition 1“ at the Museum of Everything, London. Galerie Susanne Zander will open in the Fall 2011 with a comprehensive one man show in Cologne.

George is currently residing at the Neues Kunstforum Cologne (www.neues-kunstforum.com) and will work here until the end of June 2011.

For further information on the Academy of Media Arts / KHM: www.khm.com

On the artist George Widener: www.galerie-susanne-zander.com

George Widener giving his lecture "TIME MACHINE" at the Academy of Media Art in Cologne on the 16th of June 2011

REVIEW "So ein Wahnsinn - Horst Ademeit in Berlin" in FAZ 27.05.2011

2011-05-27T18:41:00.004+02:00

Horst Ademeit in Berlin

So ein Wahnsinn

Horst Ademeit war besessen von der Idee einer gefährlichen Kältestrahlung. In mehr als sechstausend Polaroids aus dem Alltag wollte er diese Gefahr dokumentieren. Zeigt sich darin mehr sehen als nur seine Obsession?

Von Niklas Maak, Berlin

"Wenn man es sieht, glaubt man es nicht: Über sechstausend Polaroidfotos, aufgenommen über einen Zeitraum von mehreren Jahrzehnten, minutiös durchnummeriert. Man sieht Zeitungen, Eisenteile, Stromzähler, Elektrokabel, Fahrräder, Alltagsdinge. Im weißen Rahmen, der ein Polaroid umgibt, hat jemand mit einem mikroskopisch feinen Stift ganze Romane notiert - pro Foto findet sich oft der Gegenwert von fünf engbedruckten Seiten: Fakten, Theorien, Anmerkungen, ein arabesker Irrgarten aus schwer zu entziffernden Worten.

Horst Ademeit hat 1989 begonnen, auf Polaroids Dinge in seiner Umgebung zu dokumentieren; er war besessen von der Idee, dass von bestimmten Dingen eine „Kältestrahlung“ ausgehe, die ihm schade. So entstand über die Jahre ein Konvolut, das wie ein streng konzeptionelles Kunstwerk wirkt, der Bilderatlas einer privaten Obsession, dem auf engstem Raum ein obsessiver Roman eingeschrieben ist. Wenn man weiß, dass es Ademeit darum ging, bedrohliche Strahlungen sichtbar zu machen, bekommen die Dinge, die man sieht, etwas Unheilvolles: Das Auto schaut böse, das Kabel sieht nach Verhängnis aus (...)"

Klicken Sie hier um den FAZ- Artikel vollständig weiterzulesen.

Niklaas Maak: "So ein Wahnsinn - Horst Ademeit im Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin" in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, S.36, Nr. 123 (27.05.2011)

Online abrufbar hier.

EXHIBITION Horst Ademeit at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin

2011-05-11T14:23:00.006+02:00

secret universe:
HORST ADEMEIT

13.05 - 25.09.2011
opening: 12.05, 8 pm

With the exhibition series secret universe, the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art inaugurates a project space, which presents singular artistic positions that go beyond categorization in terms of current art keywords, but which nevertheless revert to common strategies of contemporary art. secret universe offers insight into fascinatingly coherent worlds and complex, visual narrative spaces of hitherto largely neglected artistic positions. Some of the artists presented are denominated as "outsiders"; their work cannot be clearly integrated into the art establishment. secret universe introduces these positions of astounding visual intensity beyond the clear demarcation of "inside" and "outside," revealing idiosyncratic and autonomous approaches with a potential of breaking down the discourse of art criticism and the cultural establishment.

The first exhibition of the secret universe series presents the photographic oeuvre of Horst Ademeit. Over a period of over twenty years Ademeit compiled an archive comprising thousands of Polaroid images. In two groups of parallel works - observation images and diary images - he meticulously documented the impact of radiation on his surroundings, particularly the influence of cold rays. Making use of scientific measuring methods, he encompasses the formal canon of 20th century art, ranging from street photography to conceptual art.

Born in Cologne in 1937, Horst Ademeit completed an apprenticeship as a house painter and then went on to study Textile Design before attending the Kölner Werkkunstschule. In 1970, he was briefly enrolled in the class of Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. After a first series of documentary photographs, which depicted renovation works in dilapidated buildings, he turned increasingly to the documentation of radiation in the late 1980s. His body of work was discovered only two years prior to his death. Although originally pushed by personal motivation, Ademeit actively supported the late recognition of his work within the context of the art establishment. The National Gallery at the Hamburger Bahnhof dedicates Ademeit the first museum exhibition.

Horst Ademeit's oeuvre questions the interplay between autonomous artistic production, public awareness and art evaluation in terms of its theoretical and critical context. The secret universe series, curated by Claudia Dichter and developed with the assistance of Susanne Zander, raises these questions in regard to concepts of disposition for collections and temporary exhibitions, abandoning common practice in favour of opening the museum space to a long-term debate.

The series secret universe was made possible by the About Change, Stiftung.

All works on display have been loans from Galerie Susanne Zander.

www.hamburgerbahnhof.de

EXHIBITION 10th Anniversary of the Prinzhorn Collection

2011-05-05T11:23:00.008+02:00

Richard Lindner, Woman with a Whip, 1977

FROM KIRCHNER TILL THIS DAY

Artist Reaction of the Prinzhorn Collection

7^th May - 14^th August 2011

opening: 6^th May 2011, 5.30 pm

In 2001, the Museum Prinzhorn Collection opened in a refurbished lecture building. It celebrates its 10th anniversary with an extensive exhibition on the resonance of its collection, in which several Heidelberg institutions participate. With works by more than 60 artists, it shows the differences in the critical responses to the famous collection, from Prinzhorn’s time until the present.

In the Prinzhorn Collection Museum, works from the historic fund are mainly juxtaposed with works by more senior artists. The Expressionists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Alfred Kubin are represented, as well as Paul Klee and the Surrealist Max Ernst. The post 1945 response is shown in works by more contemporary ‘classic’ figures like Richard Lindner, Georg Baselitz, Walter Stöhrer, Arnulf Rainer, Wolfgang Petrick, Emil Siemeister, and Edgar Schmandt, but also by younger artists like Lisa Niederreiter and Jennifer Gilbert. The cabinets contain different responses to textile works like the little jacket by Agnes Richter and to the iconic drawings of August Natterer. The Public Library presents in its foyer and reading area an installation by Peter Riek; the DAI exhibition space shows unexpected views on and into the museum by the photographer Jochen Steinmetz. The Museum Haus Cajeth sees an encounter of several draughtsmen and women: Jörg Ahrnt, Julia Kuhl, Stefan Lausch, and Dorothee Rocke. And the Heidelberger Forum für Kunst brings together the responses of 27 artists of the BBK.
Thus the exhibition gives an overview of art in the 20th and 21st century from an eccentric but revealing perspective.

Museum Sammlung Prinzhorn 

Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie

Universitätsklinik Heidelberg 

Voßstraße 2 

D-69115 Heidelberg 

www.prinzhorn.ukl-hd.de

EXHIBITION Tichý at WILKINSON, London

2011-05-03T15:04:00.022+02:00

MIROSLAV TICHÝ
5 May to 5 June 2011

Wilkinson Gallery, London

in collaboration with Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

Miroslav Tichý began taking photographs in the 1960s, continuing until the late 1980s, accumulating an expansive archive of images. Tichý originally studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he was an esteemed painter and draughtsman, taking a lively modernist approach to his artwork. In 1948, with the adoption of communism in Czechoslovakia, artists were enforced to produce work in the socialist realism manner, which Tichý determinedly rejected. In opposition, he and like-minded alumni formed an artist collective, the Brněnská Pětka (Brno Five), staging subversive exhibitions, which attracted continuous state surveillance. In 1957, the artist suffered a mental collapse - he was prone to psychological breakdowns from a young age - and this led to his removal from mainstream society, moving back to his small hometown, Kyjov. He became a non-conformist, eccentric character, half-conscious, half-delusional to his subversive outsider situation.

The artist devotedly wandered the streets, compiling a meticulous photographic archive of Kyjov. He mainly photographed the local women; the curvaceous contours of a body in motion, captured moments of sartorial revelation, smooth calves truncating from underneath full skirts, and remote utterances muttered between intimate sororities. He honoured women in bikinis, becoming a regular of the periphery of the local swimming pool, photographing from the other side of the fence, the metal mesh dissecting the surface of his images. He worked with a homemade camera that he fashioned from used materials, such as shoeboxes, rubber bands and tin cans, complete with makeshift telephoto lenses, polished with toothpaste and ashes. Tichý would then print on a homemade enlarger. He would subsequently adorn certain prints with pencil marks, highlighting the contours of a form, or decorating the edges with coloured cardboard borders, until the works were spilled scatteringly onto the floor, some used as beer mats, some nibbled by rats.

Tichý was an unobserved observer. His approach follows in the tradition of street photography; individuals roaming with lightweight cameras, shooting unsuspecting subjects, recording private moments occurring in public spaces. His photographs present the potential voyeuristic nature of the camera. His continuous contemplation of the female form refers his work to the tradition of high art, where the female nude is seen as the visual culmination of aesthetics. Tichý both celebrates and subverts the pictorial tradition of the nude. The soft focus, careful observation and caressing light provide the photographs with a painterly quality. Yet simultaneously their haphazard compositions and degraded surfaces distort the female form, reminding the viewer of family snapshots. Tichý reveals that the female nude can easily cross the thin line between nudity and nakidity, eroticism and illicitness, spilling into the realm of the pornographic. The ideology of realism, which imbues the photographic image, results in the increased sexualisation of the depicted body, reinforced by the tactile, fetishistic qualities latent in a photograph, diminishing the proximity between subject and viewer.

Tichý was fulfilling a scopophilic urge, whilst fuelling a subversive protest against the Soviet-satellite regime. His move from painting to photography permitted a continued individual artistic endeavour. Photography was less threatening to the Czech authorities than abstract painting. It was dismissible as an innocuous form of amateur documentation. Tichy positioned himself as the town eccentric, and as an outsider he was able to withdraw into the background, his ensuing invisibility providing him with the freedom to assume the role of an observer. His anonymity was an act of political and artistic intent.

The artist’s compulsive collecting of images mimicked the Czech government’s extensive surveillance regime. His archiving acted as a parody of the state’s obsessive observation, carried out with a seemingly inadequate caricature of a camera. The mechanism’s simplicity of conviction and the irreverence, with which he treated his images, becomes a satire of the inherent complexity and futility of a large government surveillance regime. Tichý was a dissident spy, persistently surveyed and incessantly surveying.

Tichý’s experience parallels the heightened state of surveillance and voyeurism that characterises our modern society. The exhibitionism we encounter in these photographs is now a constant impulse, in an age dominated by the accessible and intrusive nature of the Internet and CCTV. The difference between Tichý’s photographs and the plethora of images today, are that his photographs were not intended for public dissemination, but were driven by a private desire for visual and dissident pleasure. The aesthetic of Tichý’s photographs clash with the unsoiled lucidity of digital imagery, his photographs have been touched, not retouched. The grainy quality, the curled edges, the pencil marks, and the yellowing paper all characterise these images. They are structured by their limitations and their imperfections, and above all the presence of the artist himself. His circumstances, his persona and his idiosyncratic approach to photography all mark the final physical object, visually manifesting the reveries of a peeping dissident.

Miroslav Tichý’s photographs have only come to the public attention in the last seven years; inaugurated by his inclusion in the 2004 Seville Biennial, by eminent curator Harald Szeemann. Since 2004 several major international venues have mounted exhibitions, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008) and International Centre of Photography, New York (2010).

Miroslav Tichý died on 12 April 2011, aged 85.

This show was organized in collaboration with Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne.

All installation views of the Wilkinson Gallery by Peter White

www.wilkinsongallery.com
www.galerie-susanne-zander.com

Miroslav Tichý dies at age 85

2011-04-16T13:39:00.004+02:00

Miroslav Tichý (November 20, 1926 – April 12, 2011) was a photographer who from the 1960s to 1985 took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjov in the Chech Republic, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials. Most of his subjects were unaware they are being photographed. A few struck beauty-pageant poses when they sighted him, perhaps not realizing that the parody of a camera he carried was real. His soft focus, fleeting glimpses of the women of Kyjov are skewed, spotted and badly printed — flawed by the limitations of his primitive equipment and a series of deliberate processing mistakes meant to add poetic imperfections. Of his technical methods, he has said, "First of all, you have to have a bad camera", and, "If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world."
During the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Tichý was considered a dissident and badly treated. His photographs remained largely unknown until an exhibition was held for him in 2004. Tichý did not attend exhibitions, and lived a life of self-sufficiency and freedom from the standards of society.

Tichý died last Tuesday. April 12th, 2011 in Kyjov.

Miroslav Tichý was represented by Galerie Susanne Zander.
www.galerie-susanne-zander.com

ART FAIRS Galerie Susanne Zander @ ART COLOGNE 2011

2011-04-12T00:00:00.001+02:00

Galerie Susanne Zander presents:

George Widener
Chris Hipkiss
Miroslav Tichy
Horst Ademeit
Aurel Iselstöger

Visit us in hall 11.3 - booth C40

opening: April 12th, 5 - 9 pm

13-16 April 2011: daily from 12 a.m. to 8 p.m.
17 April 2011: from 12 a.m. to 6 p.m.

www.artcologne.com

EXHIBITION Tichy at the gallery of the Braunschweig University of Arts

2011-04-05T16:21:00.009+02:00

Photographs and Illustrations
13th April - 13th Mai 2011

opening: April 12, 2011, 7 pm

Miroslav Tichý himself never cared to be in the limelight, he sought neither to be exhibited nor to be published. It simply did not seem desirable to him. He repeatedly declared that the world was a mere pretense, an illusion, in which we perceive only that what we want to perceive

In the late 1940s, following his training at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, Tichý started out as a painter and illustrator. However, the totalitarian conditions surrounding him paired with personal experiences meant that he increasingly alienated himself from the official art and cultural scene. Eventually, Tichý withdrew completely from the public eye and one day began to take photographs.

As time went on, he increasingly neglected his appearance, growing a beard, leaving his hair long and matted, his clothes mere rags. Children were mostly afraid of him to start with. They believed that his photographic equipment was fake and that, in reality, he was not a photographer at all. His apartment had the look and feel of a crazy inventor’s workshop. There was no heating, meaning that the winters were damp and cold. There were pictures, illustrations and photographs strewn about the floor, collecting mold. But this was not important to him. Tichý who was born in a small village in Moravia on November 20, 1926 has today grown to be more amicable; he no longer scares curious visitors away with a battleaxe. He stopped taking pictures in the early 1990s. The ball got rolling several years ago when the nephew of an old friend convinced him to hold his first exhibition and Harald Szeemann presented him at the 2004 Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville. The world has taken an interest in the old “Samurai” ever since.

Welcoming address:
Prof. Dr. Hubertus v. Amelunxen, President of the Braunschweig University of Art
Introduction: Prof. Dr. Andreas Bee, Curator of the exhibition

Mon–Fri 1–6 pm, Thu 1–8 pm
Closed on public holidays

Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste Braunschweig/Braunschweig University of Art
Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1
38118 Braunschweig Germany.

www.hbk-bs.de/en/aktuell

EXHIBITION Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern at Michael Werner Gallery, New York

2011-03-16T13:28:00.007+01:00

From Barefoot Prophet to Avant-Garde Artist
16th March - 30th April 2011

Michael Werner Gallery presents the first major exhibition in the United States of works by Outsider Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern (1892-1982). The exhibition includes over 30 works by the German artist, many of which are exhibited for the first time.

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern's path to artistic recognition was not an easy one. Born in 1892 in Kaukehmen, East Prussia, he was an insolent and unruly youth whose early years were marked by inexplicable illnesses and a general disinclination to work. Incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic, he vagabonded in Germany for several years, essentially dropping out of existence until reappearing in 1919 as Professor Dr. Eliot Gnass von Sonnenstern, a quack practitioner of palmistry and natural health remedies. "Gnass" hoodwinked a broad section of the public but, instead of pocketing his proceeds, he gave his money to the poor. The next several years found "Gnass" in recurring trouble with German authorities suspicious of his holistic practices. He regularly landed himself in jail, lunatic asylums and penal camps before escaping in 1944 to Berlin, where he survived by selling firewood scavenged from the city’s post-war ruins.

In 1949, aged 57 and lacking any formal visual arts training, Schröder-Sonnenstern began to draw. An intense repertory of images rapidly poured forth from the artist’s hand. Combining fragments from biblical, mythological, and literary sources, Schröder-Sonnenstern’s roguish entities are at once farcical, demonical and highly erotic. His fantastical drawings are without iconographic precedent. Executed in colored pencil on paper and board, his otherworldly forms and scenes are often combined with texts penciled directly onto the surfaces of the drawings. The works attack bourgeois sensibilities at every level with a message that is both deeply dystopian and oddly euphoric.

By the late 1950s Schröder-Sonnenstern seemed destined for international stardom. Hans Bellmer was singing his praises to the Surrealists in Paris, proclaiming Schröder-Sonnenstern "the only genuine painter that I have encountered in Berlin". In America, Schröder-Sonnenstern was heralded as "A Prophet in Berlin" by Edouard Roditi in the popular Arts magazine in 1957. Jean Dubuffet enthusiastically courted the artist, eager to promote his work as Art Brut. In 1959 several works by Schröder-Sonnenstern were included in l'Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealism, organized by Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp at Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris. The following year Breton and Duchamp included Schröder-Sonnenstern in another international Surrealist exhibition, The Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters' Domain at the D'Arcy Galleries in New York City. Breton's Mostra Internazionale del Surrealismo, which he organized for Galleria Schwarz in Milan in 1961, introduced Schröder-Sonnenstern to Italian audiences. Schröder-Sonnenstern was the first German artist of the post-war period to be recognized internationally, opening the way for artists such as his near-contemporary, Joseph Beuys. Budding artists Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck saw Schröder-Sonnenstern as the living embodiment of the figures they admired most, chiefly Vincent Van Gogh and Antonin Artaud. The aspiring painters even approached Schröder-Sonnestern to contribute to their now legendary First Pandemonium Manifesto.

Yet for all his appeal to serious artists and intellectuals of the time, Schröder-Sonnenstern was virtually ignored by the gallery establishment in Berlin. Despite an increasing demand for his works among collectors and fellow artists, he was not granted a solo exhibition until 1961 at Galerie Brockstedt in Hamburg. Following the death in 1964 of his longtime companion, Martha Möller, Schröder-Sonnenstern’s production deteriorated and by the end of that decade his reputation had waned. Schröder-Sonnenstern died in Berlin in 1982.

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern: From Barefoot Prophet to Avant-Garde Artist is the first major exhibition in the United States devoted to Schröder-Sonnenstern's work. Dr. Pamela Kort's revelatory catalogue text charts the artist's troubled life and eventual rise to modest fame and provides an in-depth analysis of the works exhibited.

The exhibition is on view from 16 March through 30 April.
Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM.

www.michaelwerner.com

ART FAIRS Galerie Susanne Zander @ INDEPENDENT 2011

2011-03-05T13:41:00.004+01:00

Galerie Susanne Zander at the second edition
of Independent 2011, New York

Preview: Thursday March 3rd, 4 pm to 9 pm

Horst Ademeit
Christ Hipkiss
Oskar Voll

Independent
March 3 – 6, 2011
548 West 22nd Street,
New York, NY 10011
www.independentnewyork.com

Thursday March 3, 4 – 9pm
Friday March 4, 11am – 8pm
Saturday March 5, 11am – 8pm
Sunday March 6, 12 – 4pm
Admission is free

EXHIBITIONS: Sassa Trülzsch featuring Foma Jaremtschuk in Berlin

2011-02-24T17:25:00.003+01:00

W. BULLINGER and F. JAREMTSCHUK
Inviolable
02 – 26 February 2011

SASSA TRÜLZSCH
Blumenthalstr. 8
10783 Berlin
www.sassatruelzsch.com

Wed – Fr 11 – 6
Sat 2 – 6 and by appointment

EXHIBITIONS @ VILLA MERKEL, ESSLINGEN Michael Bauer: K-Hole & The Keno Twins 4

2011-02-17T15:43:00.012+01:00

27. February 2011 - 08. May 2011
Opening 27. Februar 2011, 11 am

Michael Bauer: K-Hole

Art as a drug? It is by no means improbable that Michael Bauer’s K-Hole will lure us away into absurd, psychedelic worlds. Worlds featuring a conglomerate of sculpture and painting. Colour fields looking like patches of dirt form the starting point for these pictures. Surreal constructions grow out of them, endowed with heraldic shapes and ornaments. Individual geometrical elements, with coloured stripes or patterns like chequer boards in grey-brown shadowy worlds attract attention. The images almost seem to be moving, if it were not for the fact that isolated lines border or divide up the picture. Michael Bauer also confronts his painting with sculptures, as references drawn out of the image. Things that do not belong together are mixed, analysed and re-presented. Architecture conceived especially for the exhibition repeatedly, indeed iteratively, shows forms from Michael Bauer’s pictorial language. The entrance hall to the Villa Merkel is transformed into a K-Hole like a roundabout, a spinning top. The exhibition will be continued in modified form from June 2011 at the Casa Cavassini in Udine.
Michael Bauer, b. 1973 in Erkelenz, lives in Berlin.

The Keno Twins 4

This exhibition has two faces and within that simultaneously one, whose profile is succinctly drawn. In the fourth edition of The Keno Twins the curator, artist Michael Bauer, continues an exhibition cycle that uses iconological comparisons to set the peripheral alongside the innovative, things that are of an especially independently distinctive cast along side established ones.

What we have here are those sculptures, paintings and graphic works from Outsider Art that are not within any official artistic framework and yet are repeatedly cited by established artists.
Connections are quickly made. Mask-like sculptures; drawings of fantastic dreams; photographs as precise, almost painstaking records of apparently visible cold radiation. But despite the manner of an antiques dealer, an art collector, indeed almost an art historian, it really is an artist who is assembling things that move him. Michael Bauer’s view of art is refreshingly free from stereotyped thinking.

The exhibition shows work by artists including Horst Ademeit, Steve Claydon, Michaela Eichwald, Alasdair Gray, Charlie Hammond, Chris Hipkiss, Aurel Iselstöger, Robert Kraiss, Fabian Marti, Jb Murray, Michel Nedjar, David Noonan, Dietrich Orth, Michail Paule, Stefanie Popp, Aurie Ramirez, Sava Sekulic, Renee So, Miroslav Tichy, Oskar Voll, August Walla, George Widener, Agatha Wojciechowsky, Mark van Yetter amongst other.

Curator: Michael Bauer

villaMERKEL|BAHNWÄRTERhaus
Pulverwiesen 25
73726 Esslingen am Neckar

Opening times: Tue 11-8; Wed-Sun 11-6,
Mon closed
Admission: 3 €; red. 1,50 €

www.villa-merkel.de

REVIEW Paul Humphreys "Sleeping Beauties" - Kölnischen Rundschau vom 26.01.2011

2011-01-26T13:33:00.015+01:00

Trösterin im Dornröschenschlaf:
Paul Humphreys "Sleeping Beauties" in der Galerie Susanne Zander

"Alpträume haben Kathy, Nicole, Brenda, Natalie und all die anderen sicher nicht Ganz friedlich liegen sie auf ihren farbigen Kissen, während ein leichtes Lächeln die Mundwinkel umspielt. Die "Sleeping Beauties" sehen aus, als wären sie nur kurz eingenickt, dabei hat Paul Humphrey sie schon vor rund 20 Jahren in den Dornröschenschlaf versetzt.

Akkurat nebeneinander aufgereiht hängen einige der Darstellungen schlafender Frauen nun an den Wänden der Galerie Susanne Zander und erlauben Besuchern und vorbeieilenden Passanten den indiskreten Blick auf ihre ruhenden Gesichter..."

(zum Weiterlesen klicken Sie auf die Abbildung oben)

Die Ausstellung ist nur noch bis Freitag, der 4. Februar 2011 in den Räumen der Galerie Susanne Zander (Antwerpener Straße 1, D-50672 Köln) zu sehen!

Hamacher, Katharina. "Trösterin Trösterin im Dornröschenschlaf: Paul Humphreys "Sleeping Beauties" in der Galerie Susanne Zander" in Kölnische Rundschau, Rubrik: Kölner Kultur, Nr.21 (26.02.2011), S.9.

REVIEW Galerie Susanne Zander in kunst:art (Jan-Feb 2011)

2011-01-12T17:29:00.010+01:00

Galerie für Gegenwelten :
Die Galerie Susanne Zander in Köln

"Dass die sogenannte Outsider Art eigentlich die Kunst der Insider ist, machte Jonathan Meese bei seinem Besuch der gerade zu ende gehenden Ausstellung Weltenwandler in der Frankfurter Schirn, die sich mit dieser Kunst beschäftigte, noch einmal deutlich.

Für die Kölner Galeristin Susanne Zander ist das schon länger klar. Sie betreibt seit 1988 eine Galerie für Outsider Art und Art Brut im belgischen Viertel und vertritt, zusammen mit ihrer Teilhaberin Nicole Delmes, Künstler, man könnte auch sagen Ausnahmetalente..."

(zum weiterlesen klicken Sie auf die Abbildung unten)

Sprügel, Julia: "Galerie für Gegenwelten - Die Galerie Susanne Zander in Köln" in kunst:art, nr. 17 (Jan-Feb 2011).

visit us on facebook now: http://de-de.facebook.com/pages/Galerie-Susanne-Zander/175094305834115

Sous le Vent de l'Art Brut / Collection de Charlotte Zander

2010-12-03T12:40:00.009+01:00

Charlotte Zander started to collect Naif and Outsider Art in the early sixties. With arround 4000 works it is now the largest Naif Art collection worldwide. The Museum Charlotte Zander is based closed to Stuttgart at Schloß Bönnigheim and opened for the public.

The exhibition "Sous le Vent de l'Art Brut" La Halle Saint Pierre / Paris will show Outsiders from the Charlotte Zander Collection such as:
Auguste Forestier, Margarethe Held, Chris Hipkiss, Augsutin Lesage, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Sava Sekulic, Seraphine de Senlis, Willem van Genk, Alfred Wallis and Adolf Wölfi.
The exhibition will start in January 2011.

Hilma af Klint in Frieze Magazine / November issue 2010

2010-11-19T17:37:00.003+01:00

Spirited Away

Current November issue 2010 of Frieze Magazine with a focus on 'Religion & Spirituality' featuring Swedish medium and artist Hilma af Klint.

Including 3 double fold pages with large scalle images and an article by Ronald Jones & Liv Stoltz.

Please visite Frieze Magazine for more information.

Courtesy: cover image by Frieze Magazine / November issue 2010

FILM "Rouge Ciel" An Art Brut film by Bruno Decharme

2010-11-16T14:05:00.022+01:00

abcd and SYSTEME B have just finished the production of ROUGE CIEL, An Essay on Art Brut, a film directed by Bruno
Click on the clip below above.

The Japanese Kunizo Matsumoto cannot read nor write, yet he has invented a form of writing that is both beautiful and enigmatic. The American George Widener, who is capable of memorizing events of the last 1,500 years, can also predict the future, which he inscribes in his “magic squares," on a paper tablecloth. Fernand Desmoulin, a French engraver, draws with no light while the “spirits” guide his hand. The Czech Zdenek Kosek sits for weeks looking through his window, with no food or sleep. In his notebook he records all sounds and movements around him, fearing that if he stopped, the world would cease to exist. The postman Ferdinand Cheval, left on his own, worked on his “Palais Ideal” for 3 decades.

Rouge Ciel tells the story of these artists beyond the bounds of norm, visionaries who set ablaze our spirit and shake up our ways of thinking. This film features interviews of those who have influenced the perception of art brut, writers, philosophers, psychoanalysts and art amateurs, tracing its fragmented history.
With: Henry Darger / Gabriel Joaquim Dos Santos / Adolphe-Julien Fouré / Zdenek Kosek / Alexandre Lobanov / Helen Martins / Kunitzo Matsumoto / Simon Rodia / George Widener / Purvis Young & the interviews of : Manuel Anceau / Jean Dubuffet / Phillys Kind / Jean-Louis Lanoux / Randall Morris / Lucienne Peiry / Jennifer Pinto Safian / Barbara Safarova / Gérard Schreiner / Michel Thévoz

HD/Dolby E 5.1/93 minutes

Morton Bartlett @ Linn Lühn Gallery

2010-10-30T18:49:00.024+02:00

MORTON BARTLETT
THOMAS RUFF

October 30 – December 22, 2010

Further images at: Linn Lühn - Cologne

Photo: Courtesy Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne / Linn Lühn, Cologne

Morton Bartlett's (1909 - 1992) work ultimately surfaced in its totality only after his death. He was a private, inconspicuous man whose passion was creating a fantasy family - a superlative group of perfectly self-sculpted children, aged mainly 6 -17, wearing meticulously hand-made clothes and specially constructed wigs. Bartlett first began to make his dolls in 1936, the same year that Hans Bellmers book The Doll was published in Paris. His pencil drawings of young girls, the hand-made dolls and the staged photographs of his beloved children, all key elements of an artificial paradise which fascinates and repells at once and which lend insight into the work of a Gepetto of lost children, a man himself an orphan.

Christoph Schellberg has selected six of Bartlett's drawings to show them alongside three formerly unseen photographic works by Düsseldorf based artist Thomas Ruff's - the blurred, pixelated internet-blow ups "Nudes" (2009) - in an exhibition which draws new light in the respective work by juxtaposition and which suceeds in opening up surprisingly subtle paralells. Ruff's porn stars bodies are blurred to the point of abstraction, lending the brute explicitness of porn the spectral qualities of fantasy. United in Linn Lühn's cool, geometric gallery space two artist of different times and discursive background offer very distinct media of projection for desire or the detachment of such, both toying with voyeurism and questioning the beholder's sense of perception and intimacy.

Text: Monika Koencke

The Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole reopened

2010-10-27T12:29:00.033+02:00

© Max Lerouge/LMCU

After four years of work devoted to the renovation of the original building of Roland Simounet and its park, as well as its restructuring and extension by Manuelle Gautrand, the Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole reopened this fall with a new name: the LaM, Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut. The concomitant display offers a fresh approach to the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, and throws new light on the history of art through major temporary exhibitions.

As the only museum in Europe to present simultaneously the principal movements of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, the LaM will propose to the public a prestigious collection of modern art, outstanding examples of contemporary art and a collection of art brut that has no equal in France. These three collections bring together nearly 4,500 works. In 1999, these collections were enriched with the largest collection of art brut in France, thanks to the donation made by the association L’Aracine.

The L’Aracine collection was initiated by Madelaine Lommel in 1983. This donation to the LaM consists of 3,500 works by 170 French and foreign artists: drawings, paintings, assemblages, objects and sculptures. The biggest names in art brut are represented in it: André Robillard, Aloïse, Barbier Müller, Carlo Zinelli, Joseph Crépin, Henry Darger, Paul End, Auguste Forestier, Abbé Fouré, Madge Gill. With a total exhibition space of some 4,000 m2, the LaM is now the first museum to present simultaneously collections of modern art, contemporary art, and the largest French collection of art brut, which was donated by L’Aracine in 1999.

Weitere Infos: www.musee-lam.fr

© André Robillard, Galerie Susanne Zander, Köln

Galerie Susanne Zander@ ART FORUM BERLIN 2010

2010-10-06T17:07:00.000+02:00

Galerie Susanne Zander presents

Horst Ademeit
Chris Hipkiss
Aurel Iselstöger
Miroslav Tichy

Find us in hall 20 booth 108

opening: 6th October 2010
7th - 10th October 2010, noon - 7pm
Exhibition Grounds Messe Berlin, halls 18-20, Palais am Funkturm

REVIEW: "Outsider Kunst: Fantasten an der Macht" im HANDELSBLATT (01.01.2010)

2010-10-03T17:34:00.011+02:00

"Die Kunst von Außenseitern überzeugt mit ihrer Originalität und Kraft. Trotz hoher Qualität findet sie nur selten Eingang in die Museen. Privatsammler haben sie dagegen schon vor 100 Jahren entdeckt. Einzelne Künstler erzielen sechsstellige Preise..."

Klicken Sie hier um den Artikel vollständig weiterzulesen.

Schreiber, Susanne: "Outsider Kunst: Fantasten an der Macht" in Handelsblatt vom 01.01.2010.
Online abrufbar hier.

REVIEW: Horst Ademeit in der Oktober-Ausgabe von art - Das Kunstmagazin

2010-10-01T15:28:00.020+02:00

"Die 8500 Polaroids, mit denen Horst Ademeit 20 Jahre lang den Widrigkeiten des Lebens und einer geheimnisvolle Strahlenkälte trotzte, hielt er selbst nicht für Kunst. Aber wo verlaufen die Grenzen?"

In der aktuellen Ausgabe von art - Das Kunstmagazin stellt Mirja Rosenau in einem 7-seitigen Portrait des Künstlers einen Mann auf der Suche nach Beweisen vor und eröffnet ein weitere Tür in das umfassende Oeuvre Ademeits.

Horst Ademeit ist noch bis zum 21. Oktober 2010 in der Galerie Susanne Zander zu sehen.

Rosenau, Mirja: "Ademeits Welt", Art. Das Kunstmagazin, Oktober 2010, S.76-82.

Aloïse Corbaz / Bernd Ribbeck

2010-09-24T14:07:00.006+02:00

Die Galerie Ben Kaufmann zeigt neue Arbeiten von Bernd Ribbeck aus dem Jahr 2010 zusammen mit Zeichnungen und Collagen von Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964), einer der wichtigsten Vertreterinnen der Art Brut. In ihren Arbeiten, die erstmals 1948 von Jean Dubuffet ausgestellt wurden, stellt Aloïse Corbaz romantische Traumwelten dar. Sie verhandelt darin phantastische Rollenspiele, in denen zugleich Gender Themen anklingen. Aloïses Werk wird von jüngeren Künstlern, darunter Bernd Ribbeck (*1974), hoch geschätzt. Auf kleinformatigen MDF-Platten malt Ribbeck mit Acrylfarben, Pigmentmarker oder Kugelschreiber sich überlagernde Schichten, die er im Entstehungsprozess wieder abwäscht, abkratzt, übermalt um sie erneut zu überkratzen. Das Ergebnis sind geometrische Abstraktionen, konzentrierte Bildräume von innerer Strahlkraft. Mit Präsentationen wie Art Basel Statement, 2007 oder der Teilnahme an der Manifesta, 2008 wurden Arbeiten von Bernd Ribbeck einem internationalen Publikum bekannt. Zurzeit sind seine Arbeiten auch in der Ausstellung 'Rudolf Steiner und die Kunst der Gegenwart' im Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg zu sehen.
Ausstellung vom 18.09 - 16.11.2010

Ausstellungsansicht, "Bernd Ribbeck, Aloïse Corbaz"2010
Foto: Courtesy Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin

Oskar Voll, August Walla, Karl Junker, George Widener, Aloïse Corbaz , Adolf Wölfli & Henry Darger at "Weltenwandler" / Schirn Kunsthalle

2010-09-15T13:31:00.003+02:00

Oskar Voll at "Weltenwandler" / Schirn Kunsthalle - Frankfurt

Das Denken jenseits der Norm lässt fantastische Werke entstehen. Gebunden an die schöpferischen Fähigkeiten, an seelische Zustände, die vom Alltäglichen, „Normalen“ mehr oder weniger abweichen, enthüllen Outsider-Künstler in ihren Werken Unerwartetes. Häufig am Rande der Gesellschaft stehend, beleuchten sie die Grenzen und Widersprüchlichkeiten des menschlichen Daseins und vermitteln eine tiefe Unruhe über die Beziehungen zwischen Wirklichkeit und Fantasie. Sie lenken den Blick auf die undurchsichtigeren Wege des Denkens und geben Anlass zu grundsätzlichen Fragen. Die Ausstellung zeigt in einem Spektrum vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart eine exemplarische Reihe von intensiv erlebbaren Räumen, in denen sich auf eindrucksvolle Weise die individuellen Welten der Künstler erschließen: So betritt man das „Ewigkeitenendeland“ eines August Walla, taucht in die Liebes-traumwelten der Aloïse und in die präzisen mathematischen Utopien von George Widener ein oder trifft auf die lebensgroßen Kokongespinste von Judith Scott. Die gewandelten Welten vermögen den Betrachter anzuregen, aus den Gewissheitsstrukturen des Alltags herauszutreten.

Kuratorin: Dr. Martina Weinhart (Schirn)

Oskar Voll, o.T., 20,5 x 26,5 cm, Courtesy Galerie Susanne Zander, Köln

Filmankündigung: "ADEMEIT" im Film Forum - Museum Ludwig

2010-09-03T12:29:00.010+02:00

am 11.September 2010 18:00 Uhr
Film Forum / Bischofsgartenstr. 1 Museum Ludwig, Köln

"ADEMEIT“
England 2010, 26 min. HD 16:9, Regie Michael Bauer & Marcus Werner Hed

Trailer bei Pundersons Gardens, London

Der Film beleuchtet das Leben des deutschen Künstlers Horst Ademeit. Unabhängig, abgeschieden und außerhalb der Kunstwelt arbeitet Ademeit seit über 20 Jahren daran, „Kältestrahlen“ nachzuweisen. Die „Kältestrahlen“ beeinflussen seine Gesundheit und seine Umwelt maßgeblich. Auf tausenden Polaroids und dutzenden Kalenderblättern, jedes eng beschrieben, vermerkt er die Veränderungen in seiner Umgebung. Die Dokumentation zeichnet ein eindringliches Portrait des Künstlers, der diesen Sommer im Alter von 72 Jahren verstarb.

Die Premiere fand im März in White Columns, New York statt.

Horst Ademeit, "5091". Mischtechnik / Polaroid, 11 x 9 cm

Wir trauern um Bruno Schleinestein / Bruno Schleinstein Obituary

2010-09-01T17:33:00.010+02:00

Bruno Schleinstein verstarb im Alter von 78 Jahren am 10. August 2010.
With deep sadness, Galerie Susanne Zander is mourning the passing of Bruno Schleinstein on 10 August 2010.

Nachruf auf Bruno Schleinstein at The Guardian, London.
Please see also Bruno Schleinsteins obitruary at The Guardian, London.

Foto: Copyright Klaus Theuerkauf, Berlin

Wir trauern um Horst Ademeit / Horst Ademeit Obituary

2010-07-13T15:01:00.016+02:00

Nach schwerer Krankheit verstarb Horst Ademeit am 1. Juli 2010.
With deep sadness, Galerie Susanne Zander is mourning the passing of Horst Ademeit on 1 July 2010.

Foto: Copyright Susanne Zander, Köln

Intuition / Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection at Whitwort

2010-06-29T13:15:00.005+02:00

26 June 2010 - Summer 2011

Chris Hipkiss, An Other Han, 1998
Copyright: Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, Whitworth Art Gallery

Get “plugged into the mains electricity of the imagination”* with Henry Darger, Madge Gill, Chris Hipkiss, Scottie Wilson, and others whose art has developed outside of formal training. This is a first opportunity to see highlights from this extraordinary collection on display since its arrival at the Whitworth earlier this year.

The works exhibited show the range of unique and often highly-crafted artworks in the collection. A panorama by Henry Darger features his reoccurring themes of childhood and war. Here, depicted in Darger’s trademark brilliant block colour, innocent schoolgirls the Vivian sisters are captured and then escape the grasp of the evil Glandelinians. Madge Gill’s work, whether on fabric, embroidered, or drawn on card, is by contrast densely worked, packed with abstract, architectural lines, crosses and zigzags. Judith Scott’s suspended sculptures of wrapped yarn and multicoloured wools conceal within them a bamboo armature or found object. Chris Hipkiss’ monumental work of 1993, London, is a gothic, visceral city of interconnected towers and tubes all portrayed in detailed monochrome.

Several of the artists in the collection were unrecognised in their own lifetime. When she died in 1961 Gill had hundreds of drawings piled in her wardrobe and underneath her bed, never having wanted to sell her works. For Darger too, his work was a private affair, his works being discovered only very shortly before his death in 1973. However, seclusion and obscurity is by no means the case for all the self-taught artists represented here: before her death in 2005 Scott was the subject of a monograph by art historian John MacGregor and enjoyed 18 years making work in the Creative Growth Center, California. Chris Hipkiss continues to exhibit throughout the world and has work in private and public collections. Victor Musgrave and Monika Kinley chose to collect artwork that they felt was genuinely original, intuitive and made by artists outside the mainstream system of art education and galleries. The result is a collection of almost 800 drawings, paintings and sculptures that has become the first of its kind to join the permanent collection of a public museum in the UK. Trustees of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection generously presented the entire collection to the Whitworth Art Gallery in March
2010.

Sava Sekulić, Napoleon and his Daughters, 1975
Copyright: Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, Whitworth Art Gallery

This gift is due the generosity of Monika Kinley and was facilitated with the support of the Contemporary Art Society.

*Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate

Martin Ramirez Exhibition @ Museo Reina Sofia / Madrid

2010-03-31T11:50:00.005+02:00

Martin Ramriez, c. 1960-63, Gouache, colored pencil and graphite on pieced paper
28 x 43 cm
Image courtesy: Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York

Martin Ramirez. Reframing Confinement
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia / Madrid
Exhibition from March 31 until July 12, 2010
Curated by Brooke Davis Anderson
This exhibition on Martín Ramírez will bring together some eighty drawings from 1948 to 1963, exploring this artist’s extraordinary production. These works highlight Ramírez’s memories of Mexico, as well as his encounter with the North American landscape and the richness of his unique imagination. Art critics celebrate Ramírez’s oeuvre for its bold lines, meticulous repetitions and extraordinary variations within the same themes addressed consistently by the artist. Also to be shown together with these works is a selection of drawings discovered in a garage in California in 2007, which have not yet been exhibited outside New York.

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo shows the Outsider Art Collection of Joost van den Toorn

2010-03-19T21:47:00.008+01:00

Image: George Widener, copyright: Joost van den Toorn

Joost van den Toorn and the outsider art

March 13th, 2010 - June 20th, 2010

In the print room, the museum is showing bronze and ceramic sculptures by Dutch artist Joost van den Toorn, in combination with a collection of outsider art accumulated by the artist himself. Van den Toorn feels it particularly poignant to display his collection in the Kröller-Müller Museum due to the large collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Of all artists, Vincent in particular was regarded as an outsider in his early years, and thereafter.

He says of his collection: “Good art is so hard to find that you are better off searching for it in the less obvious places as well. Not just from afar, but also on the fringes of our society. Much of the work collected here was made in psychiatric institutions, such as the Gugging in Maria Gugging in Austria, in homeless shelters, or on the streets. The results of ten years of frenzied collection are displayed in the museum. Acquired from five or so specialized galleries in Europe, America and at auctions. I hope that this impassioned, uncompromising art inspires you as much as it has, and still does inspire me.”

Joost van den Toorn (1954) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. In 1990 he was presented with the Leonado da Vinci award. He exhibits in solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. Joost van den Toorn’s work is characterized by irony, gravity, melancholy and human inadequacies.

Represtented artists: Franz Artenjak, Anton Dobai, Wolfgang Hueber, Aurel Iselstöger, Fritz Koller, Monsiel, Otto Prinz, Philipp Schöpke, Harald Stoffers, Theo, George Widener and others

Image: Franz Artenjak, copyright: Joost van den Toorn

Miroslav Tichy Exhibition @ International Center of Photography, New York

2010-03-19T16:52:00.004+01:00

Foto: Susanne Zander, 2009

This is the first American museum exhibition devoted to the work of the reclusive and mysterious Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý. Now over eighty years old, Tichý is a stubbornly eccentric artist, known as much for his makeshift cardboard cameras as for his haunting and distorted images of women and landscapes, many of them taken surreptitiously. Tichý began photographing in the 1950s, in part as a political response to the social repressions of Czech communism. However, it is only in the past five years that his intensely private work has gained public attention. The exhibition, organized by ICP Chief Curator Brian Wallis, includes a number of Tichý's homemade cameras as well as approximately 100 of his photographs.

The exhibition “Miroslav Tichy” continues through May 9 at the International Center of Photography.

See also: The New York Times : "An Ogling Subversive With a Homemade Camera" by
Karen Rosenberg.

Surrealismus und Wahnsinn / Surrealism and Madness

2010-03-19T15:59:00.007+01:00

In Surrealsm and Madness paintings, drawings and prints by the surrealists are juxtaposed with works from the Prinzhorn Collection which Hans Prinzhorn had published in Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922). The same year as it was published Max Ernst brought the book to Paris, where, as a 'Picutre Bible', it became a source of inspiration of many surrealists.

There are remarkable analogies in creative processes: the automatic drawings of Andre Masson are
anticipated in the "scribblings" and 'informal' paintings of asylum inmates: in his paranoiac-critical method, Salvador Dali explicitly refers to charachteristics of psychic illness which produce visual double meanings and ambiguities; Max Ernst was paritculary intested in the combination of heterogeneous elements, a practice which Prinzhorn describes in detail for some illustrations in his book; and precursors for Hans Bellmer's body fusions and 'cephalopods' can als be found in the Collection.

See also an article about the book "Gegenwelten in Zwirn, Bettlaken und Papier" by Julia Voss,
Frakfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18. Februar 2010

Surrealismus und Wahnsinn / Surrealism and Madness
Edited by: Thomas Röske and Ingrid von Beyme
Wunderhorn ISBN: 978-3-88423-338-2

Max Ernst, Oedipus, 1931 / (Cover of he special edition of "Cahiers d'art" 1937)

August Natterer (Pseudonym: Augus Neter), Wunder Hirthe (II), ca. 1911-13

Horst Ademeit @ White Columns, New York

2010-03-19T15:11:00.013+01:00

White Columns presents the first solo exhibition in the United States by Dusseldorf-based Horst Ademeit. Working independently, and outside of the context of art, since the late 1980s Ademeit has embarked on an obsessive program of collecting evidence – through photography and meticulous note-keeping – that would establish, in his mind, the existence of what he called “cold rays,” unseen forces that he believed severely impaired and impacted upon his life and surroundings.
The exhibition will run until April 17.

Fotos: Nicole Delmes 2010

Horst Ademeit Film by Michael Bauer and Marcus Werner Hed

2010-02-24T14:06:00.004+01:00

'Ademeit' trailer - Pundersons Gardens from Marcus Werner Hed on Vimeo.

A 30min documentary film looking at the unique work of German outsider artist Horst Ademeit.
Premiere at White Columns, New York on the 5th of March 2010.

Review: 'Oskar Voll' at Benediktiner Stift - Admont

2009-12-30T17:49:00.056+01:00

On view until November, the 'Museum für Gegenwartskunst - Stift Admont showed higlights of the Prinzhorn Collection - Heidelberg.

Prinzhorn, who analysed and displayed the works by psychiatrical patients in an art-theoretical discours, collected in a short period from 1919 to 1933 a collection of approx. 5000 drawings, sculptures and paintings. Additionally he published his now world wide known book "Artistry of the Mentally Ill" in 1922, which concentrates on the links between "art brut" and modern art and has been one of the most influential books for Surrealist like Max Ernst, André Breton and the Parisian Scene of the 1930s and 40s. Also it can be seen as one of the precursors of modern art historical- and "art brut"- literature who still functions as an inspiration for artists in todays modern art scene.

For the first time on view outside Germany, the curarted selection of major 'art brut' classics now includes central masterpieces by Else Blankenhorn, Paul Goesch, August Natterer and Oskar Voll, amongst others.

Voll, who is one of the most outstanding artists from the Prinzhorn Collection, created a highly charged body of work which included an obsessive examination of soldiers, military and nights. Being known for helding 'Reichstags talks' at pubs or restaurants, most of his drawings and sketch-books reflect political themes and issues of the early 19th century. In a narrative format Volls drawings also seem to recall the early decades of silent film and echo German military traditions and correctness by portraying side views of uniformed static men.

Further information & audiopodcast accompanying the show

Captions:
OSKAR VOLL untitled, OV001, double-sided, pencil on paper 20.5 x 26.5 cm

An Outstanding Exhibiton: The Museum of Everything / London

2009-12-08T20:19:00.028+01:00

The Museum of Everything

“For these artists there are no studios, no press junkets,
no art fairs, no magazine spreads. Instead there are treasure troves of untrained work, discovered under rocks, in basements and attics, its creators often unaware their art would ever see the light of day.”

Opening October 2009, The Museum of Everything is London’s first and only public space for artists and creators living outside modern society. Beautiful, challenging, delicate and democratic, this secret art has inspired generations of artists, from Jean Dubuffet to Jean-Michel Basquiat. In this inaugural exhibition, the museum has invited leading international artists, curators and figures to explore the connection with contemporary art. Contributors include: Annette Messager, Eva Rothschild, Tal R, Jamie Shovlin, Bob & Roberta Smith, Richard Wentworth, Idris Khan, Arnulf Rainer, Ed Ruscha, Jockum Nordstrom, Klara Kristalova, Karin Mamma Andersson, Mark Titchner, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave and Anthony Hegarty amongst others. Each collaborator has chosen artists or artworks which influence or inspire them - including the spirit drawings of London-born medium Madge Gill, the recycled ceramic kingdom of Indian roads worker Nek Chand and the panoramic fairytale illustrations of renowned Chicago recluse, Henry Darger. Darger is the most important marginal artist of the Twentieth Century - and this exhibition features a unique series of sequential images, displayed together for the very first time since his death in 1973.

From janitors to jailbirds, mediums to miners, The Museum of Everything features over two hundred drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, presented within a 10,000 sft former dairy and recording studio in Primrose Hill in Regents Park.

Artists represented: Aloise Corbaz, George Widener, Charles Dellschau, Willem van Genk, Martin Ramirez.......

Captions:
MORTON BARTLETT Untitled (plaster head of young boy), c.1950 Silver Gelatin Print 12.7 x 10.1cm © The Museum of Everything
HENRY DARGER Untitled (detail), c.1940-1960 Tracing collage pencil and watercolour 60.5 x 270.8cm © The Museum of Everything

NEW PUBLICATION: CHRIS HIPKISS

2009-12-08T14:49:00.007+01:00

To kick a wind to

A quality edition of Hipkiss drawings, printed in black and white on 170gr Rives paper and including a poster insert (67x95cm). Size: 30x40cm. Pages: 32. Short text by Randall Morris (in English, with French translation). Price: 20 Euros.

Courtesy of French artist and publisher, Blanquet, and his United Dead Artists imprint, we are pleased to announce the availability of the first ever publication dedicated to the work of Hipkiss. Rendered in black and white, from large format colour transparencies, image quality is superb, and the size of this soft-cover edition allows for a much better idea of the works as they are 'in the flesh' than is ever possible on screen. A poetic piece by New York art writer, Randall Morris, graces the back of a giant poster of the 2009 drawing, Dreizehn Hassminen.
Purchase publication at Galerie Susanne Zander

Book Review: THE MESSAGE - Kunst und Okkultismus

2009-12-07T20:08:00.017+01:00

Buch herausgegeben im Verlag de Buchhandlung Walther König.

"Ich fühlte mich ganz sicher geführt von einer unsichtbaren Kraft, über die ich nichts Näheres sagen kann. Zuerst musste ich sticken, dann überkam mich ein Strom von Eingebungen, und ich musste schreiben...Und dann treibt mich etwas zu zeichnen."

So beschreibt die Engländerin Madge Gill ihre ersten Erfahrungen als Medium. Geführt, getrieben oder auch nur aufgefordert erklären Georgina Houghton, Margarethe Held oder auch Augustin Lesage den Schaffensprozess Ihrer Arbeiten, die sie in automatischen Zeichnungen bis hin zu großformatig Leinwandkompositionen oder konstruierten Werkkomplexen umsetzen.

Frei nach dem bekannten Bildtitel Sigmar Polkes "Höhere Wesen Befahlen" widmet sich 'THE MESSAGE - Kunst und Okkultismus' in diesem Kontext umfangreich mehr als 20 Künstlerpersöhnlichkeiten des späten 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, die sich als 'Medium' mit dem Kontakt zu einer höheren, geistigen Welt auseinander setzten. Den zentralen Ausgangspunkt bildet hierfür die prinzipielle Öffnung gegenüber einer anderen höheren Welt, die das Buch durch einen Textbeitrag von Peter Gorsen sowie André Bretons "Die automatische Botschaft" fundiert.

Neben wichtigen frühen Vertretern aus der Prinzhorn Sammlung - Heidelberg oder den Werken Albert von Schrenk-Notzings, bezieht 'The MESSAGE' so zusätzlich auch zeichtgenössische Positionen, wie Paul Laffoley oder Vanda Vieira-Schmidt ein, deren 'work-in-progress' die historischen Bezüge zum 'Okkultismus' des Fin-de-Siècle oder dem 'Mediumismus' der frühen 1910er und 20er Jahre in der Gegenwart manifestiert.

Book Review: Inner Worlds Outside at Whitechapel Gallery - London

2009-12-07T17:23:00.022+01:00

Created outside the mainstream and the art world, Inner Worlds Outside, shown in 2006 at the Whitechapel Gallery - London, explores the sublime parallels between some of the greatest names of the twentieth century art and artists mainly considerd as 'self taught' or regarded as 'social outcasts'.

Separating by term, the exhibition easily resolves the art historical defined boundaries of media or periodes and offers an open perspective on intuitively created works of art which focus on dreams, imaginary landscapes, the erotic body and the allure of language.

Including works by Hans Bellmer, Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Egon Schiele, Martín Ramírez, Alfred Kubin, Augustine Lesage, Sava Sekulic and a major lage scale drawing by Chris Hipkiss amongst others.

Find out more about Outsider Art and the Musgrave-Kinley Collection

"Séraphine" - Ein Film über das Leben der Séraphine Louis

2009-12-05T08:35:00.006+01:00

"Séraphine"
Der Film ist nun auch in den deutschen Kinos zu sehen.
Er wurde mit 7 Cesars ausgezeichnet.

Darsteller: Yolande Moreau, Ulrich Tukur u.a., Regie: Martin Provost
Hier gehts zum Official Séraphine movie trailer

Séraphine Louis lebte in Senlis, wo sie ihren Lebensunterhalt als Putzfrau verdiente. Ihr Entdecker und Förderer war der deutsche Kunstsammler und Kunstkritiker Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), der 1912 durch Zufall auf die zurückgezogen und in Armut lebende Frau aufmerksam wurde, als er Urlaub in Senlis machte und dort eines ihrer Bilder entdeckte. Uhde beschaffte der Malerin mit den ausgebleichten Haarsträhnen, dem blassen Gesicht und fanatischen Blick die großen Leinwände, die sie für ihre Gemälde benötigte. Für Séraphine war Malen ein magischer Akt, ihre Bilder entstanden beinahe in Trance. 1930 verlor sie den Verstand und verschleuderte in der Folge ihr Geld. Am 15. Februar 1932 wurde sie in die Nervenheilanstalt von Clermont-sur-l'Oise eingewiesen. Dort starb Séraphine Louis im Jahr 1942 im Alter von 78 Jahren. Sie ruht auf dem örtlichen Friedhof in einem Massengrab.

Foma Jaremtschuk im Forum Kunst Rottweil

2009-12-04T16:58:00.007+01:00

Das FORUM KUNST ROTTWEIL zeigt vom 29. November 2009 bis zum 17. Januar 2010 Zeichnungen von Foma Jaremtschuk und Michail Paule.

Paul Laffoley in Paris

2009-12-04T16:26:00.005+01:00

Palais de Tokio / Paris zeigt
Chasing Napoleon
15.10.2009 - 17.01.2010
DAVE ALLEN / MICOL ASSAËL / CHRISTOPH BÜCHEL / DORA WINTER /
GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON / DAVID FINCHER / TOM FRIEDMAN /
RYAN GANDER / ROBERT GOBER / ROBERT KUSMIROWSKI /
PAUL LAFFOLEY / TONY MATELLI / OLA PEHRSON /CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE / HANNAH RICKARDS / DIETER ROTH /TONY SMITH / JOHN TREMBLAY /

Paris Sammlung J.J. Lebel

2009-12-04T15:58:00.004+01:00

Soulèvements
Jean-Jacques Lebel
25.10.09 - 17.01.2010
im
La Maison Rouge
Antoine de Galbert zeigt in seiner Stiftung die umfangreiche Sammlung des Künstlers Jean - Jacques Lebel. Gezeigt werden Arbeiten u.a. von Aloise Corbaz, Apollinaire, Artaud, Arcimboldo, Baudlaire, Bellmer, Blalla W. Hallmann, Brecht, Breton, Dix, Duchamp, Ernst, Hugo, Klossovski, Kubin, Molinier............
Unbedingt ansehen!

Bruno Schleinstein at New York Times

2009-12-04T14:58:00.010+01:00

Bruno Schleinstein at New York Times / article by Michael Kimmelman

Horst Ademeit in Ludwigshafen

2009-12-04T13:58:00.003+01:00

Images Recalled - Bilder auf Abruf
05.09 - 25.10.2009
3. Foto - Festival Mannheim
Eine Biennale, die sich dem Medium Fotografie verschreibt, muss danach fragen, was das fotografische Bild in unserer Gesellschaft so wichtig macht. Die verschiedenen Ausstellungen werden zeigen, wie das fotografische Bild unseren Blick auf die Welt ordnet und strukturiert. Während die Bilder der Massenmedien diese Muster meist voraussetzen oder verfestigen, ist es insbesondere die künstlerische Fotografie, die jene Bildmuster hinterfragt, die der Journalismus, die wissenschaftliche und die private Fotografie etabliert haben.

auf/gezeichnet @ Galerie Konzett

2009-12-04T13:46:00.007+01:00

auf / gezeichnet
Ausstellung in der Galerie Konzett / Wien
18. September bis 17. Oktober 2009

Fotografie und Zeichnung von: Horst Ademeit (D), Nobuyoshi Araki (J), Joseph Beuys (D), Johann Hauser (A), Hermann Nitsch (A) und Miroslav Tichy (CZ).
Fast 20 Jahre seines Lebens widmete sich Horst Ademeit (*1937) der fotografischen Dokumentation von „Kältestrahlen“, welche ihn und seine Umwelt beeinflussen und schädigen. Mit Hilfe der Fotografie sicherte er Beweismaterial und dokumentierte seine Forschungen. So sind Zeitung, Lebensmittel und Messgeräte wie Thermometer, Kompass und Uhr zu nummerierten Tagesfotos arrangiert, die mit handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen wie Messwerten, Ortsangaben und atmosphärischen Beschreibungen versehen sind. Parallel dazu begann Ademeit, mit der Kamera seine Umgebung zu erkunden: die Wohnung, den Keller, die Nachbarhäuser, bis er schließlich das gesamte Stadtviertel nach Spuren der Strahlenbelastung absuchte. Ademeits Gesamtoeuvre beläuft sich auf mehrere tausend Polaroid- und Digitalfotos und hunderte ergänzende Textseiten. Entdeckt wurde sein Werk erst vor einem knappen Jahr: Nach Abschluss seiner Kältestrahlenrecherche 2007 übergab Ademeit, der in einem Düsseldorfer Seniorenheim lebt, seine Bilder und Aufzeichnungen einer Sozialabeiterin. Diese wandte sich an einen mit Art Brut vertrauten Psychiater, der wiederum Kontakt mit der Kölner Galerie Susanne Zander aufnahm, wo Anfang dieses Jahres die erste Einzelausstellung Ademeits stattfand.
Vor allem auf dem Kunstmarkt hat sich erst spät Respekt gegenüber der 1945 von Jean Dubuffet als „Art Brut“ bezeichneten Kunstrichtung entwickelt. Dazu beigetragen haben nicht zuletzt die unter der Leitung des Psychiaters Leo Navratil arbeitenden Künstler der Nervenheilanstalt in Gugging (NÖ). Einer von ihnen ist Johann Hauser (*1926-1996), dessen Arbeiten Navratil als „zustandsgebundene Kunst“ bezeichnete. Eine Kunst, die gänzlich vom psychischen Zustand abhängig ist – einerseits vom Überschwang der manischen Periode, andererseits von einer totalen kreativen Abstinenz und Ideenleere während der depressiven Phase. Der Übergang zwischen den beiden Phasen vollzieht sich zumeist in graduellen Schüben, in denen sich Form und Farbgebung vereinfachen und bis zu äußerster Abstraktion führen. Von Anfang an verwendete Hauser stets nur Bleistift und Farbstifte. Er zeichnete zuerst die Konturen und füllte danach die Fläche aus. Dies geschah mit einer derartigen Intensität, dass die Bilder oft den Eindruck von Malereien erwecken. Ein weiterer „rehabilitierter“ Außenseiter ist Miroslav Tichy (*1926). Seine künstlerische Entdeckung beruht auf der von Harald Szeemann kuratierten Biennale von Sevilla 2004. Als Gegner des kommunistischen Regimes verbrachte der tschechische Künstler etliche Jahre im Gefängnis und in psychiatrischen Einrichtungen. Danach begann er, u.a. mit selbst gebauten Kameras aus alten Brillengläsern und Klopapierrollen, zu fotografieren, mit Vorliebe Frauen. Über Jahrzehnte hinweg hatte er die Maxime, täglich eine bestimmte Anzahl an Fotos zu machen, lange Zeit täglich 3 Filme à 36 Bilder, die er selbst entwickelte. Bromflecken, Fingerabdrücke, selbst bemalte Rahmen, manchmal auch auf den Fotografien nachgezeichnete Linien machen ein jedes zum Unikat. Auch Nobuyoshi Araki (* 1940) bearbeitet seine Fotografien zuweilen, als Reaktion auf die Zensur seiner Bilder. Da Fotolabors sich in den 70er-Jahren immer wieder weigerten, seine Bilder auszuarbeiten, griff Araki verstärkt auf das Medium Polaroid zurück. Wie Tichy sieht der, mit Bondage-Aufnahmen der „Kinbaku“-Serie berühmt gewordene Japaner in seinen Fotografien eine Hommage an die Frau. Während Tichy jedoch den Beobachter gibt, inszeniert Araki seine Aufnahmen stets perfekt. Er arbeitet ausschließlich mit asiatischen Models und betont, dass „Kinbaku“, die Kunst des Fesselns, auf Freiwilligkeit beruhe und eine Form von Liebkosung darstelle.
Weil Fotografie das ideale Dokumentationsmedium darstellt, ist sie mit performativer Kunst wie dem Wiener Aktionismus untrennbar verbunden. Weniger bekannt, weil sehr selten, sind die im Zuge von Aktionen entstandenen Zeichnungen, die Zeugnis des Ereignisses ablegen. Etwa montierte Hermann Nitsch (*1938) während seiner 16. Aktion („für Stan Brakhage“) 1965 Packpapierbahnen zu einer die ganze Atelierwand bedeckenden Fläche, die er mit Linien, pfeil- wie kreisförmigen Zeichen überzog und während der dreistündigen Performance, in deren Zentrum ein gekreuzigtes Lamm stand, mit Blut und Farbe bemalte und beschüttete. Joseph Beuys (*1921-1986) wiederum entwarf im Rahmen diverser Fluxus-Konzerte und Aktionen Skizzen wie „Sibirische Sinfonie“, ein Verweis auf ein eigen komponiertes Stück, das er während des ersten Fluxus-Festivals an der Staatlichen Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 1963 zur Aufführung brachte. Organisiert wurde das Festival von Beuys, Nam June Paik und George Macunias, der die aus der Experimentalmusik abgeleitete Aktionskunst nach Europa vermittelt hatte. Die Zeichnung dient hier nicht zuletzt als Verweis auf eine epochenweisende Kunstrichtung.

Ausstellung Outsider @ Galerie Friese

2009-12-04T13:31:00.000+01:00

Galerie Klaus Gerrit Friese
19. 09. - 14. 11. 2009
Horst Ademeit, Morton Bartlett, Chris Hippkiss, Wolfgang Hueber, Paul Humphrey, Foma Jaremtschuk, Michail Paule, Miroslav Tichy

Für Outsider Art kann man bestimmte Merkmale festlegen: Sie führt ein Höchstmaß an Identität von Kunst und Leben vor, denn für die Mehrzahl dieser Künstler ist die Kunst ihr Leben. Sie veranschaulichen ihre privaten Mythologien, ihre Visionen und Obsessionen mit Hilfe von Zeichnungen und Malereien, Skulpturen und Objekten, Texten und Stickereien. Dabei ist für die Qualität der Werke der Geisteszustand ihrer Schöpfer unerheblich. Die Qualität dieser Werke lässt sich mit ebensolchen Maßstäben messen wie die der „Insiderkunst“. Im Unterschied dazu schöpfen die Outsider jedoch aus ihrem tiefsten Inneren und sind durch Stilrichtungen und künstlerische Trends nicht beeinflussbar. Sie negieren Grenzen zwischen Schrift und Bild, zwischen Abfallprodukten und Hochkultur. Oftmals entstehen die Werke unbemerkt von der Außenwelt in völliger Isolation, ohne das Bewusstsein, dass dies Kunst ist. Die Arbeiten sind meistens nicht einmal für den Markt gedacht, und doch sind künstlerische Anerkennung und kommerzieller Erfolg für die Künstler ebenso aufbauend wie für jeden anderen Künstler auch. Die Outsider Art führt uns ein Höchstmaß an künstlerischer Freiheit vor, sie ist oft stark emotional besetzt und gestattet intime Einblicke in die Persönlichkeit ihrer Schöpfer. Jedes einzelne Werk ist Ausdruck eines individuellen Weltbildes, und das ist es, was diese Kunst so faszinierend macht.
Claudia Dichter, Köln