calendario eventi  :: 

X

22/10/2006

Imagination Becomes Reality

Goetz Collection, Munich

An exhibition cycle focusing on the pictorial understanding of current art Part V: Fantasy and Fiction. James Casebere. Barnaby Hosking. Zilla Leutenegger. Magnus Plessen. Wilhelm Sasnal. Dana Schutz. Laurie Simmons. Matthias Weischer.

Imagination Becomes Reality is a series of exhibitions conceived and planned by Ingvild Goetz to offer visitors an opportunity to contrast and compare works of contemporary art, enabling them to discover the wide variety of forms and techniques of painting. Fantasy and Fiction, the last part of this five-part series of exhibitions, shows the works of eight international artists from the collection who were born between 1949 and 1976, namely James Casebere, Barnaby Hosking, Zilla Leutenegger, Magnus Plessen, Wilhelm Sasnal, Dana Schutz, Laurie Simmons and Matthias Weischer.
As in the first four parts of the series, the works shown are not exclusively paintings in a narrower sense but include photographs, drawings, objects and videos as well. Here again the cross-fertilization between the media will be explored in the laboratory situation of an exhibition. The title Fantasy and Fiction should not be understood as a reference to the similarly named literary or film genres but embraces a much wider constituency that includes production and the viewer’s response as well. Most of the artists in this group do in fact derive their subject matter and ideas from real places, events, or people, and in the transformation involved in the process of genesis may choose to abstract these in the various media. James Casebere says in his interview “I have sometimes described my practice as ‘inter-disciplinary’ or ‘multi-media’, but ultimately even these terms designate academic, institutional categories, and have nothing to do with the practice of making art," and the same applies to them all.

Finally, it should be remembered that the whole series is conceived as a closely spun unity, whose individual parts have had to be shown have had to be spread out over a period time due to the practical considerations of exhibiting at the Goetz Collection. It has hitherto only been possible to pick up connections across individual parts of the series via the documentation in the catalogues. The other point worth bearing in mind is that the thematic approach of individual exhibitions has meant considerable thematic overlapping and many artists could easily have been included in a different part-exhibition. This is why we are particularly pleased that large parts of the Imagination Becomes Reality series as a whole will be exhibited from February 17, 2007 as a collaboration with the ZKM | Museum fur Neue Kunst in Karlsruhe. This will provide an opportunity for new unexpected juxtapositions, reinforcements and perspectives to surprise us. The exhibition will be accompanied by the sixth and final volume of the catalogue with general essays on the subject of an expanded concept of painting. Finally, a slipcase will be produced to contain all six volumes plus a limited print of an artist’s edition in each, which will be offered at a special discount price.

List of artists:

James Casebere(*1953 in Lansing, Michigan, lives and works in New York).
The photos of American artist James Casebere appear ambivalent and mysterious, especially for a viewer seeing them for the first time. Casebere’s favorite subject matter is empty rooms or flooded tunnels of old buildings. But the pictures are not what they seem to be prima facie. They are photos of complex models built and then illuminated or flooded and subsequently photographed for dramatic effect. Even though the pictures look anonymous, they are almost always based on a particular place or have a cultural or historical reference that prompted the artist to produce the work.

Barnaby Hosking (*1976 in Norwich, Norfolk, lives and works in London)
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in London in 2004, Barnaby Hosking has attracted great international attention with his video installations. These focus on how works of art are created, and can involve sculptures, paintings, drawings, or even craft objects like bowls used in highly ritualized Japanese tea ceremonies. Hosking’s works are far more than mere documentation, since the objects he produces become part of the total installation and thus have an opportunity to establish a significance of their own independently of the artist himself.

Magnus Plessen (*1967 in Hamburg, lives and works in Berlin)
Right from the start, Magnus Plessen’s work has been about the relationship between photography and painting. Imagination, reality, emotions, and reflection are the foundation stones of his paintings. Especially in his more recent works, the abstract and experimental side has become more pronounced and the brushwork is much more in evidence. The spare brushstrokes form a system of motifs outside space and time.

Wilhelm Sasnal (*1972 in Tarno'w, lives and works in Tarno'w and Warsaw)
In Krakow, Wilhelm Sasnal started out studying architecture but then went over to art. He works mainly as a painter and draughtsman, but for some years has also been making films. Drawing on Pop Art, his works relate to the everyday environment he happens to be in, though that includes motifs he brings back from his travels. As inspiration for his works, he uses press photos, collages, videos, comics, old-master paintings, or simple snapshots. These are re-interpreted as mainly black and white pictures, either using the whole of the original or a detail, rendered either with great precision or sometimes dissolved in abstraction.

Dana Schutz (*1976 in Livonia, Michigan, lives and works in New York)
Dana Schutz sets out to give us figures and an identity, or at any rate a narrative, as for example in the series of paintings she did based on the figure of Frank (2002), ‘the last man in the world’, or The Breeders (2002). They set up associations of regeneration and the repetition of events and situations. Rendered in a fairytale narrative style that is not without a touch of cruelty, the pictures are occasionally reminiscent of Grimm fairytales. However, Schutz often seasons them with political and other symbolic content combining brutal truth with humor.

Laurie Simmons (*1949 in Long Island, New York, lives and works in New York)
American artist Laurie Simmons has been photographing dolls, marionettes, and anthropomorphized objects for thirty years. Sometimes they are posed in interiors or placed in front of carefully illuminated backdrops. Her Walking Objects series (1989-1991) for example display various objects (e.g. a firearm, a birthday cake, a house, or a book) that move on small puppet legs. Reappearing in her film The Music of Regret (2006), the protagonists from the photographs finally waken to life. A three-act musical, the film features actress Meryl Streep, who acts as the artist’s alter ago, plus an ensemble of ventriloquist dolls, lamenting to humorous effect the mistakes they have made or opportunities they let slip in their lives.

Matthias Weischer (*1973 in Elte, lives and works in Leipzig)
Interiors are an important theme in Matthias Weischer’s work. Many of his pieces show imaginatively and sometimes also oddly furnished interiors, where figures rarely appear. The paintings are crammed with painterly details - pastose surfaces abut carefully executed patterns, for example. Weischer creates art spaces in which he revels in the enormous diversity painting is capable of, conveying to the viewer great technical and craft perfection.

Image: Zilla Leutenegger, Bedroom, 2005

Goetz Collection
Oberfohringer Strasse 103 - Munich
Visitation is possible during opening hours. Please ask for an appointment: Monday to Friday 2 - 6 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Closed on sundays and bank holidays.

stampa

permanent link