1 Mar 2013 to 13 Apr 2013
Di-Sa 11-18 Uhr, Tues - Sat 11-18
JOHNEN GALERIE BERLIN
Marienstrasse 10
10117
Berlin
Germany
Europe
T: +49 30 27 58 30 30
F: +49 30 27 58 30 50
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W: www.johnengalerie.de
Wiebke Siem: Daddy's gonna tell you no lie, 2013 263 x 45 x 88 cm, 103.5 x 17.7 x 34.6 in., wood (detail) and Eve, 2013, 223 x 50 x 30 cm - 87.8 x 19.7 x 11.8 in., metal (detail). Photo: Stefan Alber
1 March - 13 April 2013 Opening: Friday, 1 March, 6 - 9 pm Gallery 1
"Wiebke Siem’s works are drastic and funny, ironic and feminist" (Ingeborg Wiensowski, Der Spiegel)
Wiebke Siem’s new works combine collage, sculpture and drawing into figures of highly ambivalent appeal. The viewer discovers allusions to Classic Modernism, housekeeping and kitchen, and African sculpture. These spheres are being interwoven ironically, making it difficult to determine irony, seriousness, citation, homage, play and deeper meaning. The viewer is confronted with ghosts haunted by unredeemed energies. Wiebke Siem does not take anything lightly. She does not call off the shackles of form, but stretches it, cuts it into pieces, mocking and respecting it at the same time. Brancusi, Giacometti and Max Ernst as well as Wilhelm Busch and Oskar Panizza keep haunting the world she creates with her figures. Her characters move in spheres beyond concepts of male and female. All boundaries are dissolved. What remains are forms, and references, reorganized by Wiebke Siem, according to the classic codes of aesthetics. The graphical and abstract element of her work is accentuated by the black paint finish. It creates the impression of wafting lines rather than materials. The figures see-saw between two- and three-dimensionality, thus increasing the ambivalence with regards to form and content.
Wiebe Siem (born 1954 in Kiel) was Professor at Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg from 2002 to 2008. Her works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Neues Museum Nürnberg (2009), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2004), The Henry Moore Institute (Leeds, 2001), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Cologne, 2001), Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin, 1998), Kunsthalle Bern (1997) and Portikus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994). Wiebke Siem lives and works in Berlin.
In time of the exhibition a catalogue will be published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst in Nuremberg.
Artist talk: Wednesday, 6 March 2013, 7.30 pm with Wiebke Siem, Penelope Curtis (Director, Tate Britain), Julian Heynen (Artistic Director at large, Kunststammlung NRW, Düsseldorf)
Jadwiga Maziarska: 1913 - 2003
1 March - 13 April 2013 Opening: Friday, 1 March, 6 - 9 pm Gallery 2
Jadwiga Maziarska (1913-2003) reminds, recalls, and foretells something. Like the process of developing film, or watching a movie – scene after scene, though she only worked with paint, wax and collage. The exhibition is the first individual presentation of Maziarska in Germany, aiming to introduce her work in a representative way: exposing her artistic process, the leading series and techniques developed by the artist between 1940s and 90s. It includes realistic abstractions (paintings, objects, sculptures), collages and newspaper cuttings (sketches). Maziarska, famous for her textile appliques from the 40s, ‘matter-paintings’ and wax reliefs from the 50s, belonged to the prewar avantgarde and is one of the most important Polish women artists of the twentieth century, along with Alina Szapocznikow. She lived in Krakow and was active in the closest circle around Tadeusz Kantor with whom she co-founded the ‘second’ Krakow Group. Maziarska’s processual art and polyphonic language reflect the prewar avantgarde believes and the postwar re-evaluation of materialism and matter as such. The first works in the exhibition date back to late 1940s, the period when Maziarska participated in The First Exhibition of Modern Art in Krakow. Maziarska’s interest in the diversity of shapes and the consistent usage (deconstruction – reconstruction) of her newspaper cuttings might be perceived today as a laboratory of an archive and an atlas of the imaginary.
Jadwiga Maziarska (*1913 in Sosnowiec, Poland, † 2003 near Krakow) studied at Krakow Academy of Fine Arts (1934-39), together with Erna Rosenstein and Tadeusz Kantor. She frequently visited Paris in the 1950s/60s and cooperated with Louise Leiris and Stadler gallery. The artist exhibited widely, including Zachêta Gallery in Warsaw, Galeria Krzysztofory, and National Museum in Krakow. In 1969 she took part in Espaces abstraits at the Galleria d’arte Cortina in Milan (organized by Michel Tapié who coined the terms informel and art autre), together with Fontana, Pollock and Wols. Other exhibitions and prizes: Palace of Arts in Krakow (1991), Jan Cybis Award (2001), Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw (2009), Parallel Systems: Gego/ Maziarska/ Trockel, Art Stations Foundation, Poznan (2012).
On Saturday, 2 March 2013, 4 pm, the exhibition’s curator Barbara Piwowarska will give a guided tour.
KUNST HALLE SANKT GALLEN presents David Renggli - Scaramouche
17 August - 27 October 2013
David Renggli - in some respects a prodigy of the Swiss art scene - has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of the public for more than ten years thanks to a unique mixture of themes and forms, of spectacle, humour and poetry.
The Showroom, London presents Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london)
12 July - 17 August 2013
The Showroom is delighted to present re-projecting (london), a major new commission by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, and the first significant presentation of his internationally renowned artwork in the UK.
