Hidden Stories
dal 19/4/2012 al 13/7/2012
Segnalato da
19/4/2012
Hidden Stories
KAI 10 Raum for Kunst, Dusseldorf
The exhibition confronts works by four international artists: Armin Boehm, Olaf Breuning, Nigel Cooke, and Mike Kelley. It features imaginary places where multilayered realities meet hazy daydreams, as if in a picture puzzle.
ARMIN BOEHM
OLAF BREUNING
NIGEL COOKE
MIKE KELLEY
Curator: Zdenek Felix
The exhibition Hidden Stories confronts works by four international artists: Armin Boehm (b. 1972), Olaf Breuning (b. 1970), Nigel Cooke (b. 1973), and Mike Kelley (1954–2012). What reverberates through these four stylistically and formally diverse artists’ works is an interest in exploring the boundaries between reality and fiction, the conscious and the subconscious, the rational and the abstract, as well as the transitions between these poles.
There is also a tendency toward a narrative, symbolic presentation of content, which arises from the scientific, psychological, and psychiatric themes that engage these artists. Primarily, the works shown deal with contemporary themes, as well as myths communicated through literature and cultural history, along with private, biographically determined narratives.
Some of the works touch upon extra-sensory phenomena, which elude rational control, while others deal with repressed memories and the traumas of the artists’ own childhoods. Hidden Stories features imaginary places where multilayered realities meet hazy daydreams, as if in a picture puzzle.
In point of fact, the paintings, sculptures, collages, and installation in this exhibition are not artificial, quixotic products. The artists are just as equally concerned with formulating perspectives and alternatives to today’s world, by providing critical models in which individual utopias and visions of freedom are subtly reflected. These range from Mike Kelley’s radical attack on false morals and their compulsions to Armin Boehm’s skepticism toward the supposed omnipotence of the sciences, to Olaf Breuning’s exploration of the many layers of the subconscious, to Nigel Cooke’s idea of using the spiritual reservoir of a dramatic abstraction to portray the apocalypse.
Image: Nigel Cooke, Protégé, 2010, patinated bronze, paint, courtesy of the artist, Stuart Shave Modern Art, London and Andrea Rosen Gallery Inc., New York
KAI 10 | Raum für Kunst
Kaistraße 10 40221 Düsseldorf
Opening hours
Tuesday to Saturday 12 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission is free