Eberhard Havekost
dal 14/3/2007 al 13/4/2007
Segnalato da
14/3/2007
Eberhard Havekost
White Cube, London
A painting begins with a photograph, either one taken by the artist or an image that he has sourced from the media. Using a computer, he might crop, stretch, skew or tweak the colours of the picture, or leave it almost untouched, before making an inkjet print that he uses as the direct source material for the final painting.
Background
White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by
Eberhard Havekost. Over the past decade, Havekost has emerged as among the most
innovative surveyors of figuration in contemporary painting.
A Havekost painting begins with a photograph, either one taken by the artist or an
image that he has sourced from the media. Using a computer, Havekost might crop,
stretch, skew or tweak the colours of the picture, or leave it almost untouched,
before making an inkjet print that he uses as the direct source material for the
final painting. To create the five-canvas work Background, B06 the artist took a
series of photographs, all at low exposure, of some rubble and debris he came across
in Berlin. He then adjusted the sense of space and levels of brightness, altering
the hue and tone to give them an even, almost featureless light. Amid the slabs of
wood and spiky wreckage, a slash of blue board emerges in every second picture, a
motif that serves both to balance the canvases and highlight the subtle differences
in each composition.
Havekost sees this space, with its randomness and piles of splintered timber in an
urban setting, as something that exists between nature and civilisation. The
artist's paintings revel in this in-between state, putting into play a set of
oppositions that animate the work: abstraction and figuration, surface and depth,
artificiality and authenticity. The diptych Made in Germany(1-2), B06 inverts the
colours of a Union Jack, transforming a national symbol - the British flag, with its
associations with pride and power - into an ambiguous abstraction. The altered flag
no longer signifies, but hangs on the wall as a set of formal relationships,
flattened of meaning. Exotik, B07 traps a large palm tree in a box-like space and
transforms its spiky fronds into flat, feathery textures. The diptych Regen 2 (1-2),
B06 depicts a cluttered scene, including a television set and cardboard boxes,
re-constituting it as two views, each so similar that apprehending them
simultaneously becomes a kind of visual riddle.
Havekost focuses on the everyday, whether through the media or his immediate
surroundings, treating all visual phenomena equally, as if almost anything could -
and does - make an interesting painting. The shift and blur of Havekost's brushwork
lends an air of fragility to the picture, as if its surface might dissolve into a
uniform skin. But despite their delicate surfaces, the paintings have a forceful
presence, and few contemporary artists bring such intelligence and energy to an
investigation into how we perceive images.
Born and trained in Dresden, and now based in Berlin, Eberhard Havekost has
exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions, including Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam (2006), Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg (2006), the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago (2005), Centre d'art Contemporain, Carjac (2003) and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Serralves, Porto (2001, 2006)
A fully illustrated catalogue, with a text by Martin Herbert, will accompany the
exhibition.
Preview Thursday 15 March 2007
White Cube
48 Hoxton Square London
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm
Admission free