calendario eventi  :: 

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2/6/2003

Peter Klasen

Hilger Contemporary, Wien

The exhibition opens on 3 June 2003, 19.00hrd

The artist will attend the opening of the exhibition. A catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition.

“Lilfe is beautiful !“ this is the title that the artist Peter Klasen, who was born in Germany and who lives in Paris, has given to his exhibition at Galerie Ernst Hilger. The latest works in this series take onlookers to the confrontations in Klasens´s world of images, taken from real and fictitious snap shots. Here, the boundaries between realitiy and fiction merge in a very curious manner. What remains is a feeling of unease.

In this connetion, Jeanette Zwingenberger writes the following about Klasens´s works:
„Since the sixties, Peter Klasen has been one of the co-founders of `figurative narrative`. In his collage pictures, he processes today´s world of the media: photographs, illustrated newspapers, films, advertisements and medical journals. With this approach, he contrasts different image stimulators: the sensualitiy of provocative breasts and the functionalitiy of a light switch. Sex appeal and fears. When female attractions are in opposition to the world of technology – we see humanity exposed to high tension – this is Klasen´s key expression.

This calls for radiacal pictures, and in doing so, he reduces the composition of a picture to its essential elements, excerpts from pictures, schematized and highly effective. The artist thrives on the immediacy in the flood of pitures surrounding him every day. ´My work is in relation to, as well as a reaction to what is happening in the world.´ The heterogeneous picture fragments become pictograms, reflections about our drastic present-day world. Klasen puts onlookers with their backs against the wall, he confronts them with striking cliché pictures. However, on his canvass, he brings them to a standstill, like one would pick a butterfly. In his case, though, the needle is replaced by a realistic screw of a nervously blinking neon light. His pictures address questions that concern each and everyone of us. The main themes are fear, confrontation with pain, aggressions and destruction. Sexual references can be found everywhere, quite conscientiously he thinks of the bipolarity of libido and the wish for death...“

Biographical Notes
1935/55 – born and raised in Lübeck.
1956-59 – Fine Arts College Berlin, with Hann Trier.
Has lived and worked in Paris sinced 1959.

Numerous exhibitions in Germany and France
Inter alia: 2001 – Les années Pop. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

ERNST HILGER GMBH.
A-1010 Wien, Dorotheergasse 5
T: +43-1-512 53 15
F: +43-1-513 91 26

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