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19/2/2013

Jonas Burgert / Ulrike Ottinger

Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover

Jonas Burgert
Schutt und Futter

In the exhibition "Schutt und futter" the Kestnergesellschaft presents the latest works by the painter Jonas Burgert (*1969 in West Berlin, lives in Berlin).

Jonas Burgert’s monumental paintings are opulent and richly detailed. His artistic repertoire draws on a rich fund cultural, historical and ethnological references. Fantastical figures, burlesque theatrical characters and surreal mythical beings populate his pictorial spaces. As participants in carnivalesque processions or entangled in mutual activities, they nonetheless remain isolated loners. Bandaged, naked or distorted bodies evoke feelings of insecurity.
Burgert’s figures are not individuals, but correspond to more archetypal symbols of existential self-reassurance. Burgert portrays universal gestures of human expression with a wide spectrum of painterly means, and imparts an auratic power to his works. He often composes his images as box-like stages, on which he unfolds the visual wealth of his imagination. Spatial openings such as wells, chasms or windows refer to a different sphere, while the sense of space is destabilised through proportional discrepancies.
The illusionistic portrayal is at times interrupted by peripheral fringes of colour, paint stains, monochrome surfaces and very diverse brushwork, and transformed into abstract, ornamental structures. Burgert’s images reflect the potential of painting to create meaning. They activate a sensuous ability to bring about spaces and atmospheres, and to mirror our existence.

Jonas Burgert studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts. His work first became known to a wider public in 2005 with the exhibition »Geschichtenerzähler« at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and has been widely collected since then. Presentations followed in international galleries, including the Denver Art Museum, the Falkenberg Collection in the Overbeck-Gesellschaft, Lübeck, the Olbricht Collection in the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg. Important institutional solo exhibitions were shown at the Kunsthalle Tübingen (2010) and the Kunsthalle Krems (2011).

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, including an essay by Dorthée Brill and an interview with Jonas Burgert and curator Heinrich Dietz.

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Ulrike Ottinger
World images

The Kestnergesellschaft is delighted to be starting the year 2013 with the exhibition "Weltbilder" by the artist and film-maker Ulrike Ottinger. The various aspects of her œuvre – film, opera and theatre directing, stage design, photography and ritual objects inspired by her travels – all flow into a large-scale installation extending through several spaces. In addition, the Kino im Künstlerhaus Hannover is showing a retrospective of Ottinger’s films from the 1970s to today.

The artwork and films of Ulrike Ottinger straddle ethnographic observation, cultural encounter and mythological narration. In this unique installation at the kestnergesellschaft the artist combines what otherwise remains unconnected, and in doing so she both blurs and highlights the distinctions between cultures. School wall charts covered with postcards and embroidery are the starting point for the installation, which meanders between reality and fiction, bringing alive different worlds through photographs from Mongolia, Eastern Europe and Mexico.
Thematically linked objects, wall pieces and processed photographs are woven into a dense network of images and stories. The staging is supplemented by the presentation of an excerpt from Ottinger’s »Taiga« (1992) – a film which describes her journey to the yak and reindeer nomads of Northern Mongolia and tells the histories of these two peoples – and the expansive slide installation »Bildarchive«.

The exhibition offers a fascinating encounter with Ottinger’s now sensitive, now strident, open and personal view of the world, history and culture.

Ulrike Ottinger (*1942 in Constance, lives in Berlin) belongs to those pioneers of art cinema who recognised the possibilities of film as a continuation of their work early on. Her output goes far beyond that of a film-maker, however: she is an artist, photographer, author and director. She has been making film history since the 1970s, and her works have been shown at the most important international festivals and have won numerous prizes. Her artistic work caused a sensation at the Biennale di Venezia (1980), documenta 11 (2002) and the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004).

Image: Jonas Burgert, Schutt und Futter (2012) | 380 x 600 cm | Öl auf Leinwand | © Jonas Burgert | Courtesy Blain | Southern | Foto: Lepkowski Studios

Press contact:
Konstantin Wenzel Tel +49 511 7012016 Fax +49 511 7012020 presse@kestnergesellschaft.de

Press preview wednesday 20 february 2013, 11 a.m.

Kestnergesellschaft
Goseriede 11 30159 Hanover
Opening hours
daily and on public holidays 11 am - 6 pm
thursday 11 am - 8 pm
closed on monday
Entrance fee:
members and ADKV 0 Euro
single ticket 7 Euro
reduced single ticket 5 Euro
ticket for opening 10 Euro

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