Thursday 23 June 2011

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



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

Wednesday 15 June 2011

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




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

Friday 10 June 2011

LECTURE George Widener at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne

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, 16th 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