RALF LÜDDEMANN I Tot ist der Hund ruft der Hase und bleibt zu Hause

 

 

Ralf Lüddemann, war for rain in end is no end, inkjet print, 76 x 192 cm

RALF LÜDDEMANN
TOT IST DER HUND RUFT DER HASE UND BLEIBT ZU HAUSE
(DEAD IS THE DOG SHOUTS THE HARE AND STAYS AT HOME)
December 4, 2020 – January 23, 2021

Extended Exhibition Opening
Friday, December 4, 11 am – 8 pm
Saturday, December 5, 11 am – 8 pm
Sunday, December 6, 12 am – 6 pm

“Ralf and I have been working together for five years. Since falling ill with schizophrenia, he now lives a self-imposed “life of punishment” on Lanzarote. He spends his whole time building planetary offices and is responsible for holding the entire world. He is king, he can travel into the future and the past, but he’s caught in what he calls the FIX. I have conducted and recorded many conversations with him. In the last year, he has begun painting images with MSPaint; he refers to these as the “daily keys.” His approach is oriented, amongst other things, around the principle of painting by numbers, where he uses the pixel grid to interpret and justify past and future events.” 

(Email from Lukas Marxt to Delmes & Zander, 18.01.2018)

Ralf Lüddemann (*1964) lives in Salzgitter throughout his childhood and adolescence. In 1984 he learns the trade of an orthopaedic mechanic, which he practices for six years. In 1990 his career takes a different path when he qualifies as an assistant flying instructor, and two years later he begins working as a paragliding instructor. In 1995 he opens a school for hang gliding and paragliding in Goslar. Following a long stay in hospital, he is forced to shut the school in 2003. He moves to Lanzarote in 2004, where he still lives today. The first, coincidental encounter between Ralf Lüddemann and the artist Lukas Marxt comes in 2012. In the years that follow, an intensive exchange develops between the two, in the course of which they produce the film Ralfs Farben (Ralf’s Colours, DE/AT 2019, 74 min) together. Ralf Lüddemann has been creating digital images since 2017.

He is the first artist in Delmes & Zander’s programme with an exclusively digital body of work.

Bruno Schleinstein @Ebensperger

 

Bruno Schleinstein, Entwurf Nr. 3, 1997, mixed media on paper, 42 x 29.7 cm

Bruno Schleinstein is part of the group show 

Freedom & Independence at the Ebensperger Gallery

  

"John Bock, Jörg Buttgereit, Bonnie Camplin, Christeene, Lea Draeger, Tim Etchells, Heiner Franzen, Assaf Gruber, Yuki Jungesblut, Sandro Kopp, Bjørn Melhus, Otto Muehl, Hajnal Németh, Bruno Schleinstein et al.

The exhibition “Freedom & Independence” borrows its name from Bjørn Melhus’ eponymous film Freedom & Independence from 2014. It will use its title as both, a motto and a theme, while understanding ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ as value and virtue. Being an ever evolving show works will be added to the exhibition over the course of its yet indefinite duration.

It is conceived with Mehlus’ film at its core: This experimental short questions the current global ideological paradigm shifts towards new forms of religious capitalism by confronting ideas and quotes of the self-proclaimed objectivist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand with evangelical contents of US-American mainstream movies.

The exhibition will examine themes implied by the film and draw variations from other artists’ contributions. They will be juxtaposed with Freedom & Independence in and at its centre. The works will range from spacial to drawings, from photographs to paintings. The size of the premises allow extensive installations that might change over the course of the show's duration."

The gallery is open daily around the clock only by appointment. 

For more information click here

Accrochage at the Gallery

 

Agatha Wojciechowsky, untitled, undated, chalk on paper, 60.5 x 45.3 cm

Accrochage at the Gallery from October 28th, 2020 with works from Agatha Wocjciechowsky, Helga Goetze and Alexandru Chira. Stop by to see it! 

 

Agatha Wojciechowsky was born in 1896, in Steinach, Germany. According to her own statement she experienced her first visions at the age of four. In 1923 she emigrated to the United States, where she worked as a maid, a seamstress, a laundress, and a kitchen helper in various hotels. After World War II, she became a well-known spiritual medium and a healer to a small circle of insiders. In 1951, she began to draw countless mediumistic drawings in which eerie spectral faces can be perceived through a maze of abstract forms and graphic symbols. “Mona”, the ghost of an American Indian girl, appeared to her one day and she began to draw according to Mona's instructions: “Take a small pencil, place it on a sheet of paper and watch what happens, immediately it, and I, began to draw and we drew and drew for a long time”. This is how Agatha Wojciechowsky describes the beginning of her artistic activity.

Helga Goetze (* 1922 Magdeburg, Germany, † 2008 Winsen, Germany), also known as Helga Sophia, was a German artist, writer and political activist, who lived and worked in Hamburg and Berlin. In 1972 she founded the Institute for Sex Information and published her first poetry collection Hausfrau der Nation oder Deutschlands Supersau (Housewife of the Nation or Germany’s Super Sow). Later on, Goetze kept close contact with the commune founded by the Vienna performance artist Otto Mühl and was actively associated with the Hamburg cultural centre “Fabrik”. After moving to Berlin in 1978, the artist started to maintain daily protest pickets in favour of women’s sexual liberation in front of the Technical University as well as the Berlin Gedächtniskirche. In Berlin, she also founded the “Geni(t)al University”, a gallery and open museum. Conversations with Rosa von Praunheim inspired her to make the film Rote Liebe (Red Love) in 1982. With the 1982 TV show Neue Nackte, neue Einsichten (New Nudes, New Insights), where she undressed in front of the camera, and several appearances on TV talk shows during the 1990ies, Goetze challanged the public debate around sexuality in the media. In 2000, she founded the association Metropole Mutterstadt e.V. (Metropolis Mother City) with a group of friends and in 2003, Monika A. Wojtyllo made a film about the artist, titled Sticken und Ficken (Embroidery and Fucking).

Alexandru Chira (1947, Tauseni, Romania - 2011, Bucharest, Romania), who was native of a small village in Transilvania, realized that the new idols of mechanized agriculture (tractors, threshers etc.) proved inefficient when faced with the tough limits of nature - his home village suffered of yearlong drought. Chira started to elaborate a sophisticated system of land-and-weather improving art equipment, a series of staggering, symbolic installations of painted metal, wire, and concrete. Their task was "to bring rain and rainbow", to convey prosperity, and prevent deluge. Later on, during the 1990s, already a university professor and acclaimed artist, Chira succeeded in accomplishing his lifelong dream: the ensemble in Tauseni, the biggest one-man-monument in Transylvania. Most of his prior (and later) works, either those on canvas or the drawings and objects are inspiring sketches or derivative works related to the monument. Maturing his art-agrarian fascination for decades, the monomaniac Chira deepened in the diverse branches of practical knowledge and spiritual speculation requested by such a bold plan. Architecture, design, astronomy, history, magic, UFO-logy, mysticism, shamanism, and theosophy conjoined in an effort to strengthen the material and immaterial assets of the project. Nothing is left to chance in his painted graphs. Their apparent visual geomancy is grounded on a peculiar conjunction of human will, sheer transcendence, and natural forces.

Last Weeks of the exhibition "Dream Baby Dream" at Haus Mödrath

 

Morton Bartlett, untitled, ca. 1950, pencil on parchment, 43 x 35,5 cm

 

Don't miss the last weeks of the exhibition 

"Dream Baby Dream" at Haus Mödrath, curated by Gesine Borcherdt

"The childhood home is a place of fantasy, protection, and play. But it can also be one of trauma, violence, and fear. The home is where it’s decided who we are, what will become of us, and what we will repress. For many artists, the impulse to create is rooted in childhood. Through art, they transmute their early and ingrained experiences into something bigger, something that renews, expands, and transforms our perspective on the world.

The exhibition Dream Baby Dream features artists whose work arises from just such an imaginative power. They all evince a strong connection to childhood and youth, not just as a source of creative inspiration, but also as a metaphor for physical, psychological, and social conflicts. The interplay of the artists creates an atmosphere in which the dark sides of childhood and youth take on entirely new forms.

The show’s title refers to a song by the influential electronic duo Suicide, pioneers of post-punk and of what would later become techno. The song’s dark sound, paired with Alan Vega’s Elvis-like voice, turns the American Dream that still haunts us today into a nightmarish loop—and at the same time a trance-like, shimmering hope. Here, rebellion and desire, fear and fantasy interlink. (...)"

The exhibition features among others Morton Bartlett, Charlemagne Palestine, Veit Laurent Kurz

For more information visit the page of the museum here.

Last Week of "Lusofolia: A Beleza Insensata" at Centro de Arte Oliva

Jesuys Crystiano, untitled, undated, mixed media on paper, 150 x 219,5 cm

 

It is currently the last week of the show
"Lusofolia: A Beleza Insensata" at Centro de Arte Oliva in S. João da Madeira, curated by António Saint Sivestre

The show features among others Evaristo Rodrigues, Jesuys Crystiano, José Teófilo Resende and Marilena Pelosi.

The life and work of Jesuys Crystiano are only documented after 2010, at which time he was living on the streets of Ilheus (Bahia) and taken care of by neighbors. How Crystiano ended up here still remains unclear. It was then that a German hotel owner who lived in the area first caught sight of his monumental wall drawings in abandoned buildings. From then on he continuously supported and documented Crystiano's artistic output and took him in until Crystiano's death in 2015.

Hundreds of coals and pencil drawings, some of them in large format, collages, objects and notebooks were produced during this period. In his drawings he invents surreal worlds which he puts on paper with an secure and dynamic trace. Airplanes, crowned vultures, fish, umbrellas, upside-down chairs and tables, as well as uprooted tree trunks are the recurring subjects of his drawings.

For more information visit the page of the museum here.

Moritz Scheper's Guide to DC Open!

Tomasz Machcinski, untitled, 2012, digital print on baryta paper, 30 x 21 cm

We are thrilled to be included in Moritz Scheper's guide to the best shows in Düsseldorf and Cologne

"This exhibition by Polish autodidact photographer and performer Tomasz Machcinski presents 30 photographs, dating from the 1970s to the present day, in which the artist assumes the guise of various historical figures, pop icons or alter egos in eccentric outfits. Instead of fitting into a well-composed mise-en-scène, he depicts the ageing processes of his body. Several videos, in which Machcinski dresses up as an entertainer and performs songs he has written (for example, 7 Wench, 2013), appear to offer a camouflage for his crossdressing, which was prohibited during Poland’s socialist era until 1989 and is again under threat after the country’s most recent turn to the conservative right." Moritz Scheper

 
Read the full guide here.

TOMASZ MACHCINSKI I With Love to Tommy

Tomasz Machcinski, untitled, 2005, Vintage photography, 15 x 10 cm

 

TOMASZ MACHCINSKI

With Love to Tommy

September 4 – October 24, 2020

Opening: 04.09., 11 am – 10 pm

A magic trick is immediately obvious. A bad trick exposes itself as such, while a good one instantly draws you in. 

For a long time I considered whether the selfie should play a role in this text. Whether this sort of image, perhaps the most banal of our time, actually has anything at all to do with the work of the artist. After all, while he doesn’t want to be an artist, he naturally is one nonetheless, this Tomasz Machcinski, from the small Polish city of Kalisz. 

But there is a video on YouTube of Machcinski in which he explains how he first made an image of himself, sometime in the mid-’60s of the last century. And how this older man now stands there in his front room, around 60 years later, and once again stretches out his arm, camera in hand, to shoot himself – so there it is. Machcinski doesn’t use the word selfie, of course; he speaks of light and shadow, of faces and figures and poetry. “I create figures that have lived, that do live, and some which are still to be born,” he says.

The earliest online use of the word “selfie” can be traced back to 2002. It describes a photographic self-portrait, often taken at arm’s length from one’s own hand. The Oxford English Dictionary declared the term its “Word of the Year” in 2013. Since then, it has also stood as a codeword for the act of working on oneself; for the permanent pressure to perform one’s own life; for the spiral of public staging; for the always more beautiful self; for the cult of the body; and for a schizophrenic relationship to media, and online narcissism. Today, 30 percent of young people see becoming famous as an explicit goal in life; 10 years ago, it was 14%.

Tomasz Machcinski is not famous. Did he want to be? Machcinski was born in 1942. He is the only man on the planet with 1000 faces; 22,000, to be exact. Since taking the first photograph of himself, Machcinski has repeatedly staged himself in new roles. “I is another,” the poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote in 1871, in the second of his so-called “Seer Letters.” And this is perhaps the greatest question of Machcinski’s unbelievable body of work: whether he really has been photographing himself for 60 years now, or 22,000 others. Machcinski has previously transformed himself into Charlie Chaplin, Marx, Lenin, a long-haired junkie with needle, a sheikh with pointed beard, a prisoner with shaved head, a young priest with sacrament, a soldier with pipe, a film noir police commissioner, a Nazi commander, a bearded biker, a bard with guitar, D'Artagnan with rapier and red hat, a bearded biker with steel helmet, “Che” Guevara, a hippie, the Pope, Caesar, a half-Hitler, Jesus. In addition, countless fantasy and historical figures, a knight, a cowboy, a policeman. And when he dresses as a woman – as Mother Theresa, a glamorous Hollywood actress, a woman shopping – Machcinski seems somehow even better, more exalted, more diverse. 

One sees the passing of time in his pictures – analogue black-and-white photographs from the ’60s and ’70s, later on digital photos. A young man, an old one. But their allure stems from the relationship between virtuosity and infirmity: at some point he loses teeth and gains a hunch; he wears no wig, his hair simply how it is, sometimes long, sometimes short; his chin sometimes covered by a massive beard, at others smooth. It is always both him and another that we see – an obsessive, overwhelming confusion of authenticity and artificiality. And the work of an amateur: all of these images he produced alone. Looking through them, the artist, who sometimes exhibits his scars and bodily infirmities and sometimes hides them, appears rich. The perfection of many images, his gaze, the light, the contours of his glamorous face. His 22,000 faces create a mood that irradiates out of the images. It speaks of old Hollywood – a camp, knowing otherworld; a fragile tight-rope dandy.

It was in the small Polish city where the artist has now lived for 80 years – his whole life – that the photo first reached him that started it all. On the photograph, sent to him in 1947 by the actress Joan Tompkins, stood the message, “With love to Tommy. Joan ‘Mother’ Tompkins.” Until he was 20 years old, the artist was convinced that the great Hollywood actress was in fact his actual mother. He then learned that, as a war orphan, he had been part of an “remote adoption programme.” It was the end of his dream. What is real? What is not? What is a self? Machcinski’s pictures leave all of these questions in pieces.

 - Timo Feldhaus