Maria Lassnig
April 26 - June 18, 2013
Opening Friday, April 26, 6 - 9pm
 
Capitain Petzel is delighted to announce the first solo-exhibition by Maria Lassnig at the gallery in Berlin.
 
Maria Lassnig counts as one of the most important artists of the present and has set new standards for
generations of artists in both her subject-matter and her radical presentation of it, in drawing and painting as
well as film and video. The artist achieved international recognition through her participation in the 1980 Venice Biennale, the documenta 1982 and the documenta 1997. Large-scale solo exhibitions of her work were mounted most recently at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2008, the MUMOK Vienna in 2009, the Lenbachhaus, Munich in 2010 and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2011. Maria Lassnig was born in Kappel in Krappfeld (Austria) in 1919 and today lives and works in Vienna and Carinthia.
 
Since the 1940s Maria Lassnig has dealt, through painting and drawing, almost exclusively with the visualization
of internal sensations of the body, a theme she terms “Body Awareness-Drawings and -Paintings”. Through this
approach she has created a lifetime’s body of work which takes as its starting point a recognition of the human body’s potential as a medium for generating images.
 
In 1980, after residing for many years in Paris and New York, the artist returned to Vienna, where she was
appointed to a post at the Academy of Art, becoming the first female Professor of painting in a german-speaking country.
 
Capitain Petzel shows ten paintings, most of which were created in the last three years. All canvases come directly from Maria Lassnig’s atelier and are presented in public for the first time.
 
In these new large-format works Maria Lassnig investigates themes including gender-roles, with figurative elements presented against monochromatic backgrounds in a colour-palette characteristic of the artist‘s work. The spectrum of motifs ranges from a double-portrait (“Adam und Eva“, 2010) and the presentation of a couple in the act of love, an amorphous green creature seeming to float above them (“Die Inspiration“, 2010), to a half-portrait of a young man who literally reveals his innermost, insofar as he opens up his chest with his own hands (“Der Jüngling“, 2011).
 
The exhibition “Maria Lassnig – Der Ort der Bilder“, jointly-produced by the Neue Galerie Graz and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, can be seen in Graz until the 28th of April, 2013, after which it will continue in Hamburg, from the 19th of June, 2013 onwards.
 
Press Contact I Capitain Petzel
Kathleen Knitter I Phone: +49 30 240 88130 I Email: knitter@capitainpetzel.de
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am to 6 pm

DUVE Berlin is pleased to present Die Grünen Löwen an exhibition of new work by Jen DeNike.
 
For her second solo exhibition at the gallery DeNike embarks on a journey that is born out of a mythical tale of historic orighttp://www.duveberlin.com/exhibitions/1446/press-releasein, spinning a narrative that the audience will experience in a durational live performance.
 
In the heyday of discovery, a team of German archaeologists found, in an ancient temple, 107 young women wrapped in white linen. They lay in two long rows, their bodies tightly entwined. A girl with a gold ribbon in her hair lays at the head of one row, a girl with a silver ribbon at the head of the other. To this day, the significance of the ribbons remains a mystery. Why were only two ribbons found? What ritual, long forgotten, had taken place here? Were they favored by gods or by men? Was gold dearer than silver. Or, forever obscured by the secret hierarchy of lost religions, were the maidens adorned merely because they lay at the head of their long lines of lovers?
 
Medieval alchemists were interested in transmutation of non-organic base materials, substances, into more exalted materials such as gold. The inner practice of alchemy, involves the transformation of the individual from the unconscious raw being into a form of enlightened consciousness.
 
Gold is a perfect body, engendered of argent-vive, pure, fixed, clear, red and of sulphur - clean, fixed, red, and not burning. Gold is satisfied, and wants nothing.
 
Silver is a body - clean, pure, and almost perfect - begotten of argent-vive - pure, almost fixed, clear, and white. It is of such like as sulphur - it wants nothing, save a little fixation, color, and weight.
 
A green liquid sulfate called “vitriol” purifies the matter, leaving behind gold.
 
Gold is the sun - silver is the moon. One plus seven equals eight. Eight is the lion. The lion is the sun. The green lion eats the sun, the green lion purifies, and the green lion consumes all.
 
The Die Grünen Löwen performance consists of an impressive cast of maiden girls and will be accompanied by a selection of collaged linen on wooden boards, and a series of gold and silver photographic works, including a special limited edition vinyl 45’ Single LP entitled “Gold/Silver” in collaboration with composer Orson Sieverding and the mezzo soprano opera singer Anna Katherina Hilpert. The recording of Richard Strauss’ “Die Nacht”, where the night famously steals the beloved from the lover, and Sieverding’s original bassline driven beat track will premiere at the opening reception and will be played throughout the exhibition.
 
Faced with our often ambiguously perceived human state of the duality of the male and female, DeNike thrives for a meditative state that bridges the gap to conceive the unity - as one. Like Isis and Osiris, children of Geb and Nut: the process of continuity, the circle, is key in most of her work. Two poles in movement yearning to overcome what has been lost. The longing for serenity - the search for being whole, aimed at through an allegoric rite de passage of procedural change of the basic substance matters from chaos to order. This meditative process can be partly understood when we split the works into their basic powers, their cautiously interwoven narrative elements and look at what they reveal to us. Water, silver, gold, the moon, the sun, the color white, the circle - all are representatives of a deeper symbolic meaning that meanders in a reverberating current throughout DeNike's oeuvre. Are the maidens in the performance asleep akin to Shakespeare’s Juliet? Are they hovering above ground on their way out of this profane world into a higher state of sacred life? Are they laid down to rest? What are they waiting for? Or are we awaiting them to come to protect us with their wisdom? Is it us we see parting and shifting, embarking into the next world, like Rê would have crossed the nightly sky on his Mondbarke? The synthesis that DeNike explores with help of these Stellvertreter allows us a glimpse into another world. We may not be able to put our finger on it, but if we are to allow ourselves to perceive with all our senses, DeNike’s work opens up to a world that contains magical knowledge of the prima materia, greater than the earthly worlds. A different kind of knowledge that feeds from secrets handed down over generations in the family of seers.
 
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Jen DeNike (1971) lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Bard College. Her work has been internationally exhibited including; Museum of Modern Art; MOMA/PS1; Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, KW - Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; AutoCenter Berlin, The Brooklyn Museum; CCS Bard; Miami Art Basel: Art Public; Tensta Konsthall, Sweden; Performa Biennial; CAMH Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; MACRO Roma, Experimenta Biennial Australia; MOMA Shanghai, Mendes Wood Sao Paulo, Anat Ebgi Los Angeles. She recently presented Lolita, Lo a site commissioned video and performance with LAND in Los Angeles curated by Shamim Momim. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Julia Stoschek Collection, and Il Giardino dei Lauri Collection.

The urge for self-improvement, the ideal of the flexible ego and the omnipresence of the media: Stefan Panhans’ works deal with contemporary society’s key themes.
The FELDBUSCHWIESNER gallery is pleased to present Stefan Panhans’ new photographs and two video works in their first solo exhibition with the artist.
 
In his most recent photographic series Items for Possible Video Sets (2009-2013), the world of commodities is condensed into a series of detailed, carefully constructed still lifes, which instrumentalize the aesthetic of commercial advertising photography and radically break free of its limitations. Even stranger than Lautrémont’s description of the “coincidental encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table”, here burnt baguettes can be found next to bicycle locks and organic muesli on top of porn magazines: As if they had floated together from the driftwood of the consumer world into ambivalent spaces. The materiality and colouring of the objects create a virtuous interplay. The title of the photographs suggests a reference to the working sketches for new video works, however by generating confusion, it also questions the term of representation and the familiar meanings attributed to it.
 
In his video works, Stefan Panhans creates extremely stylized characters in alienating settings, which are governed by phenomena such as casting shows, Mediamarkt, Ayurveda wellness and fusion food. Works such as Sieben bis Zehn Millionen (2005), Who´s Afraid of 40 Zimmermädchen (2007) and If A Store Clerk Gave Me too Much Change (2009), have been filmed using one single shot. The entire activity stems from the protagonist’s monologue. This does not produce cinema but a temporal image.
 
The video Sorry (2010) stands out from the minimalist sets of the earlier works: In the interior of a high-speed train, an exaggerated panorama of the contemporary media world and its protagonists unfolds. Amy Winehouse, Karl Lagerfeld and Lady Gaga find themselves in an open-plan carriage together with Michael Jackson and the sleeping artist-messiah Jonathan Meese. The completely exhausted look-a-likes of modern VIPs sit listlessly on the seats or carry XXL coffee-to-go cups through the claustrophobically narrow train compartment. They push past hipster couples, demonic athletes and heavily armed police officers. Outfits turn out to be costumes and the mechanism of self-staging is exposed, as is the set itself – a cleverly staged tableau vivant, in which reality and fiction merge.
Not smooth, beautiful, alert and present, as is required in countless casting shows, from Germany's Next Topmodel to Dschungel-Camp, but reworked, emotionless, mechanical and devoid of meaning: this is how the protagonists appear in the video loop. The soundtrack, which was commissioned especially for the video, adds to the peculiar appeal of the work. The ritual-like actions of the protagonists are in this way interwoven with our contemporary reality.
 
The presentation is punctuated by the “commercial break” of the three-minute video Homestory (Il Cielo in Una Stanza) (2012). A young woman is seated in front of a bed, a serious and concentrated expression on her face. Noise music is playing in the background. As if at a dress rehearsal for an extreme sports exhibition, she carries a huge, neon-coloured traveller’s rucksack on her back. Every inch of her body seems tense, and with almost hysterical deliberation, she reads the menu of a hip restaurant out loud. The highly-strung energy and physical tension of her recital triggers a sense of nervousness in the viewer, and finally aggressiveness. We do not relax, even when at the end of her monologue she virtuously performs two yoga exercises – the immense pressure is still tangible and the desired wellness effect does not kick in.
 
Stefan Panhans (*1967, Hattingen) lives in Berlin and Hamburg. He has already been awarded numerous scholarships and prizes, including a Kunstfonds scholarship and the Förderpreis Bildende Kunst der Arthur-Boskamp Stiftung. His works have been presented in a series of important solo exhibitions, including Untitled & Items for Possible Videosets – Concrete Run. Art is Concrete. And so is Truth?, Camera Austria / Steirischer Herbst, Kunsthaus Graz (2012), I´m cold … did I actually do the bank transfer or what kind is it? Or is it tea?, W139, Amsterdam (2012), Wann kommt eigentlich der Mond raus?, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen (2011) and Who´s Afraid of 40 Zimmermädchen, Kunsthaus Hamburg (2008). His works were recently presented in the group exhibition Former West in Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2013). An upcoming show is being planned for 2014 in Haus am Waldsee, Berlin.

We are pleased to announce the opening of Méduse & Cie, a group exhibition curated by Dennis Scholl, on April 26 at 6 pm. The exhibition will include works by Melody LaVerne Bettencourt, Michael Conrads, Max Frisinger, Ole Hartmann, Fränze Hoppe, Volker Hüller, Nicolai Kraus, Flo Maak, Katrin Rother, Dennis Scholl, Joern Stahlschmidt, Malte Urbschat and Johannes Weiss.
 
For further information and / or images, please contact the gallery.

Junggeun OH has been living in Berlin since 2005 and working continuously on his topic of The Interspaces.
Another exciting chapter of his intense work is presented at galerie son from 18 May to 13 July, 2013.
What Oh shows is consequent: he now brings into shape even the canvasses, cuts out and puts in the interspaces, reduces and abstracts.
Beside several motives from Berlin, this time Böttcherstraße in Bremen and the Basel Art Fair Building also became objects of his aesthetic view.

Florian Fausch
“Sollbruchstelle”
1. Juni – 6. Juli 2013,
Vernissage am 31. Mai (18 – 21 Uhr)
 
Bei Florian Fausch verschmelzen Aspekte der individuellen Erfahrung im städtischen Kontext mit Referenzen auf mediale Ästhetik und digitale Welten. Nicht von Ungefähr lassen sich auf die Arbeiten von Florian Fausch Termini aus dem Film anwenden, besonders das Genre des Science Fiction, aber auch digitale Szenarien aus animierten Computerspielen, sind ihm bestens vertraut. So knüpft der Maler auch an dort geläufige Raum-Metaphern an, bei denen Brüche und Sprünge offen legen, dass die Bindung an die Zeit die isotrope Raumvorstellung zwangsläufig relativiert. So fasst der Betrachter in seinen Bildern nicht verlässlich Fuß, denn der schollenartig aufgesprengte Grund, zwischen dem unverhofft Abgründe klaffen, lässt symbolisch das Gehen zum Abenteuer werden.
Scheinbar Unvereinbares findet in der malerischen Balance seiner Bilder einen temporären Ausdruck für das fragmentarische und zitathafte Lebensgefühl einer jungen Künstlergeneration, das nicht mehr durch das Postulat einer widerspruchlosen Verortung einlösbar ist.