calendario eventi  :: 

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28/2/2013

Two exhibitions

Spruth Magers, Berlin

Peter Fischli/David Weiss
march 02 - april 13 2013

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present an exhibition of work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The solo presentation will display a cross-fading installation of photographs showing views of airports. Beside this work, four sculptures are on view.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss began collaborating in the mid 1970’s and have since developed an influential position within contemporary art. The artistic duo have worked closely with Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers for over three decades, presenting one of their first solo exhibitions at Monika Sprüth Galerie in Cologne in 1983. Their focus of artistic investigation is the unspectacular aspects of domestic life, employing a wide variety of creative means of expression, ranging from film, photography and artists’ books, to sculptures and multimedia installations. The artists adapt everyday objects and situations which they place – not without humour or irony – in an artistic context, thus raising philosophical and theoretical questions regarding the explanation of the world.

Since the nineteen-eighties, Peter Fischli and David Weiss have been photographing cities, landscapes, and airports during their travels. The airports, which are the central motif of this exhibition, may be seen in quite different ways. On the one hand, as an autonomous and contemporary civilisation with coherent spatial organisation, an individual set of actors and an aesthetic language of their own. Airports are a fundamental symbol of economic globalization and networks, and they function as points of departure and intersection for international trade. On the other hand, they are the source of yearnings which leave their mark on people in their striving towards far-away and unknown places. Airports move within an ambiguity between sameness and difference. Cultural and geographical distinctions are apparent everywhere.
In this work of the artistic duo, in which hundreds of photographs of airports play the leading role, the principle of fades and the use of slowly dissolving transitions convey an impression of contemplative rapture with vivid meditative and evocative power.

The four women in business costumes (1987/2012) made of white plaster show the non-individual and stereotypical appearance of a modern woman whose activity is not clearly defined, as there are no details that allow an individual attribution. Likewise, the three automobiles (1988/2013) are, like airplanes, an essential part of our world, but in the selected aesthetic and form they only resemble prototypes. The sculptures can be read as a steady effort and ongoing artistic experiment to give an impression of today's life and its banality.

The Swiss artists Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946-2012) previously presented their airport photographs at the 13th International Architectural Exhibition, Common Ground, curated by David Chipperfield, at the Venice Architecture Biennial 2012. Their works have been on view at a large number of biennials as well as in extensive retrospectives at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2008), at the Kunsthaus Zürich (2007), as well as at the Tate Modern, London (2006). In 2003, the artistic duo were awarded the Golden Lion at the 50th Venice Biennial for their multimedia installation Fragenprojektion ("Questions," 1981-2002). They were presented at documenta X in 1997, and their film Der Lauf der Dinge ("The Way Things Go," 1987) was shown at documenta VIII in 1987. In recent years, their works have been presented in solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (2011), at the Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2010), at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2010), as well as at the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2010). In 2012, Fischli and Weiss presented the solo exhibition Walls, Corners, Tubes, and in 2009 Objects on Pedestals at Sprüth Magers London.

Sprüth Magers Berlin will also be concurrently presenting a solo exhibition by Andreas Schulze.

For further information and press enquiries please contact Silvia Baltschun (sb@spruethmagers.com).

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Andreas Schulze
march 02 - april 13 2013

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present an exhibition of new work by acclaimed German artist Andreas Schulze. In his third solo show at the Berlin gallery, the artist will present two ceramic sculptures alongside a selection of paintings, depicting landscapes inspired by the artist’s recent expedition to the island of Sicily.

Andreas Schulze first came to prominence in the early 1980’s, as a pivotal figure in the explosive flourishing of creativity which centred around Monika Sprüth’s gallery in Cologne. Schulze has since been recognised as an inventor of new pictorial worlds, having developed an autonomous and unmistakable visual language with which to explore various interior views of society. A fundamental theme in the artist’s work is the power of painting to create illusion, giving multifaceted treatment to the theme of the interplay between being and appearance, reality and staging in the medium of painting. An independent and anti-hierarchical use of traditional styles of painting links his work with the Avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, above all Dada, Surrealism and Symbolism, yet his cool, analytical compositions and his independent themes allow Schulze to retain a unique position within the context of contemporary art.

The exhibition will showcase a series of paintings depicting the landscape of Sicily, where Schulze, following the tradition of old master painters who would partake in artistic pilgrimages across Europe, recently visited. These works on paper are made up of strangely dimensioned forms, rendered in perspective and executed with a vivid palette, bringing hidden layers of consciousness and underlying emotions to mind. Ohne Titel (Bahnstrecke am Meer), 2013, depicts recognisable landmarks including the railway track which crosses the island, and the volcano Mount Etna. In four of the paintings, the artist furnishes his seascapes with isolated objects, as in Ohne Titel (Bett am Meer), 2013, in which Schulze blocks a picturesque vista with the brown form of a bed frame harbouring large, cloudlike cushions. Here, the domestic object becomes the protagonist of a concealed narrative, freeing it from its function and assigning a performance filled with significance. These illusionistic landscapes, which privilege psychological depth over flatness, correspond to the Surrealist preference for mysterious, enigmatic stage sets. By folding together the genres of interiors and landscapes, and exploring notions of inner and outer space, the compositions convey coziness and menace, familiarity and strangeness, playfulness and melancholy, calm and discomfort, ultimately evoking the dislocated and fragmented nature of contemporary experience.

Juxtaposed against the uncanny melancholy of Schulze’s paintings, two of the artist’s playfully anthropomorphic ceramic sculptures will be exhibited. These sculptures take the familiar, everyday shape of vases or jugs, adorned with the facial features of the artist himself. Each unique ceramic has been hand crafted, alluding to a sense of homely tradition which Schulze has sought to challenge and complicate in other aspects of his work. The sculptures tap into a vein of Schulze’s practice that is replete with, and almost fetishizes, bourgeois décor and ornamentation, which is symptomatic of Schulze’s fascination with modern yearnings for contentment.

Andreas Schulze was born in Hanover in 1955. He studied at the Gesamthochschule Kassel and Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he is professor of painting. Major solo exhibitions include the opening show of Galerie Monika Sprüth in Cologne (1983) and INTERIEUR at the Falckenberg Collection in Hamburg (2010). Major group exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (1983), MoMA, New York (1984), the Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen (1988) and the Triennale in Milan (1997). He lives and works in Cologne.

Sprüth Magers Berlin will also be concurrently presenting a solo exhibition by Peter Fischli & David Weiss.

Image: Andreas Schulze, Untitled, 2012. Ceramic handpainted, 33 x 24 x 27 cm. Edition Unique piece out of a series of 15 + 2 AP + 2 HC

For further information and press enquiries please contact Silvia Baltschun
(sb@spruethmagers.com).

Opening reception: 01.03.2013, 6 - 9 pm

Sprüth Magers Berlin
Oranienburger Straße 18 - D-10178 Berlin
Hours: Tue - Sat, 11 am - 6 pm

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