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Imagination Becomes Reality Part III: Talking Pictures |
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An exhibition cycle focusing on the pictorial understanding of current art
Part III. Talking Pictures Nigel Cooke, Peter Doig, Inka Essenhigh, Rosilene Luduvico, Michael Raedecker, Hiroshi Sugito and David Thorpe. February, 20 - June 3rd 2006 Imagination Becomes Reality is a series of exhibitions conceived and planned by Ingvild Goetz to offer visitors an opportunity to contrast and compare works of contemporary art, enabling them to discover the wide variety of forms and techniques of contemporary painting. Talking Pictures, the third part of this five-part exhibition cycle, focuses on narrative works by artists in the collection. Using film or canvas, they confront us with stories or fragments that we can elaborate in our own imaginations. The strong representational accent in the various works of these artists should nevertheless not prevent us from seeing in them significant views of where painting stands today. Talking Pictures relates less to actual 'talking pictures', i.e. films, videos or sound pieces with soundtracks of monologues, dialogues, text and speech, than to the specific qualities and opportunities of visual presentation in general, where the point is to engage in an exchange with the viewer. This quality is derived from the history of painting. As long as paintings used comprehensible symbols, color resonances, compositions, atmospheres or motifs, they were readable not only individually but also intersubjectively. Nowadays, the question arises as to what visual elements in the media are still generally readable at all. The exhibition endeavors to make clear through the works of Nigel Cooke, Peter Doig, Inka Essenhigh, William Kentridge, Jochen Kuhn, Rosilene Luduvico, Michael Raedecker, Hiroshi Sugito and David Thorpe how pictures, although mute, may become 'talking pictures' that confront the viewer with precise, specific statements. Visitors can spend a long time in the exhibition, because the works of art have a lot to tell, and the more profoundly we delve into them, the more we will recognize ourselves in the stories. The exhibits also serve to illustrate a concept of painting that networks with other media. Nigel Cooke (* 1973, lives and works in London) The sublime plays a major part in Nigel Cooke’s pictures, which he contrasts with the trivial and ordinary. This antithesis recurs at various points of his works, offsetting great painterly gestures with simplicity. In many of his works, dream landscapes are contrasted with the urban scene. His classic, painterly approach makes use of countless associations such as graffiti, photographs and other contemporary forms of expression. Peter Doig (* 1959, lives and works in Port of Spain, Trinidad) In Peter Doig’s works, we are reminded involuntarily of Impressionists such as Paul Gauguin or Paul Signac, or of works by Edward Hopper or Giorgio de Chirico. Doig makes quite deliberate reference to his predecessors but at the second glance we recognize fault lines and subliminal, ironic details or fragments that have to do with the painter’s life. Photos or postcards likewise serve as models, re-appearing on his canvases in changed contexts. Inka Essenhigh (* 1969, lives and works in New York) Inka Essenhigh says of herself that she uses the idiom of cartoons and aestheticises it to abstraction. She is a painter, but her most important medium is drawing, which she does on paper but also deploys in pictures. An 18th-century work by Japanese master Soya Shokaku set her on a new course. It strongly influenced her and gave her pictures a new graphic quality. Interestingly, Shokaku was an important influence on manga artist Takashi Murakami as well. Rosilene Luduvico (* 1969, lives and works in Düsseldorf) The artist grew up in a small mountain village in Brazil, so that for her nature was a central point of reference from earliest childhood. In small drawings and large-format canvases she designs forest-like landscapes with bare, fragile trees, which evoke an extreme mood of solitude in the viewer. A second important subject of her work is people sleeping. They are pictures of females of rapt beauty and inner peace. Michael Raedecker (* 1963, lives and works in London) Michael Raedecker’s approach is to set the viewer on a course. Ultimately however the viewer is left to his own devices, alone with his imagination. Raedecker’s materials are not only brush and oil paints but also needle and thread. His themes are inspired as much by classic modernist painting and its symbols as by contemporary artists of the 21st century and their symbols. In their materiality, his pictures stray markedly from the established confines of painting. Hiroshi Sugito (* 1970, lives and works in Nagoya, Japan) Hiroshi Sugito works with strong contrasts. For him it is important to trigger off associations and ideas in the viewer. In his works, the viewer is king, while he as an artist withdraws well into the background. He is there just to stimulate. His mysterious, spare subjects leave much room for our imagination to fill the stage he creates any way it takes us. With the generic images of stage and curtain, Sugito alludes to other dynamic media and forms of art. David Thorpe (* 1972, lives and works in London) David Thorpe also works with unconventional materials – thread, pieces of jewelry or plants are collaged into his works. He was strongly influenced by the 19th century Arts and Crafts movement, which, like the Bauhaus in Germany in the 20th century, left its mark on architecture, design and art. That much is evident not just from the utopian buildings of his narrative pictures but also in his futuristic sculptures and screens. Particularly in his pictures, he takes the viewer into an alien world with peculiar houses, landscapes and plants. Catalog: Imagination Becomes Reality Part III:Talking Pictures http://www.sammlung-goetz.de/index2.php?lang=en&pn=publ&id=31 Press review (selection): |
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| Photo Credits: 1-7) Courtesy Sammlung Goetz, München; 1, 2, 4-6) Wilfried Petzi, München 7) Heinz Pelz, Karlsruhe © Goetz Collection, Authors and Artists | ||||
