Johannes Kahr
dal 13/9/2002 al 31/10/2002
Segnalato da
13/9/2002
Johannes Kahr
Galerie Almine Rech, Paris
A drunken boat. The title of the exhibition is taken from the "ships of fools" in which, down the ages, "mad people" in Holland and Germany were shipped off into exile, without knowing where they were bound. In a way, "A drunken boat" is a metaphor of this. Johannes Kahrs' visual research is expressed as much by the techniques of painting and drawing as by a medium like video.
"A drunken boat"
The title of the exhibition is taken from the "ships of fools" in which,
down the
ages, "mad people" in Holland and Germany were shipped off into exile,
without knowing
where they were bound. In a way, "A drunken boat" is a metaphor of this;
even if the
works in this show are based on real documents and documents taken from
fictional
works, what they represent is already part and parcel of another world,
another
reality, and the collective memory. Each one of these works goes beyond the
subject or
event from which it has been inspired: a painting or drawing, no longer a
real moment
or situation.
Johannes Kahrs' visual research is expressed as much by the techniques of
painting and
drawing as by a medium like video. Johannes Kahrs' video works have been
shown in
France first at the Almine Rech gallery in 1998, then as "A-h scratch"
(1998) at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyons, in 1999, "Fuck you OT-Depression"
(1999) (then in
November 1999 at PS1 in New York), as "A-h scratch" again (1999) at the
Contemporary
Art Centre in Sète in 1999, and at the FRAC Pays de la Loire in 2001, again
as "A-h
scratch" (1998). His latest audiovisual work, "Tonight" (2001) was exhibited
at the
Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, in the summer of 2001.
The show at the Almine Rech gallery is the outcome of a year of work devoted
to
painting and drawing. Johannes Kahrs born in 1965 in Brême, lives and works
in Berlin.
Exhibition from 10 November to 23 December 2000
In November 1998, during Johannes Kahrs one-man show at the Almine Rech
Gallery, a
sizeable video installation ("A-h") was shown, along with a series of 50
charcoal
drawings.
The upcoming exhibition will, for the most part, consist of a diptych: two
large oil
paintings. Johannes Kahrs paints and draws, he also works with video and
photography.
The challenges of painting today are a vital field of exploration for this
artist: how
to make a painting with such and such a topic? A 1997 painting: a woman
seated,
revealing her bared genitalia, another, a painting from 1993, depicts a man,
with one
leg amputated--such are the still difficult, not to say taboo, images and
subjects
which Karhs has elected to address. Another facet of the subjects he's
interested in
concerns the images we have in common, due to a shared film and contemporary
music--faces and situations or events which sometimes become symbolic.
The diptych for this Johannes Kahrs exhibition, on view from 10 November to
23
December 2000, is a continuation of this line of exploration in his work.
Johannes
Kahrs'work will be exhibited at the Munich Kunstverein in January, 2001.
Galerie Almine Rech
127, rue du Chevaleret 75013 Paris
Tel: + 33 1 45 83 71 90
Fax: + 33 1 45 70 91 30