Kavi Gupta is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of the Leipzig-based painter Ulf Puder.
Ulf Puder�s latest series of paintings describes the artist�s unique imaginary world of desolate and haunting environments populated only by abandoned architecture and rendered in his signature muted palette. Tents, mobile homes, churches, train cars and other recreational spaces that should be occupied are left emptied and silent. Bungalows float on makeshift platforms within flooded streets; other structures seem to be in the midst of a storm. Natural disasters come to mind - places that have recently seen the unthinkable and have been left uninhabitable.
Verwerfung (Rejection, 2008) depicts what reads as a church flanked by an elevated roadway that has been split in half � a locomotive wagon is seen above looming over the edge. The imagery spells out a horrifying scenario, though the artist paints the seen teetering from abstraction to representation. The space is beautiful, the sky is blue without evidence of what has occurred or perhaps in this case what is about to occur. When one encounters another image in the exhibition titled Hub the structures collapse even further re-emphasizing the ongoing decay and fragility of these enigmatic places.
Ulf Puder was born in Leipzig, 1958 where he currently lives and works. Puder belongs to the first tier of famous graduates from the Leipziger Hochschule f�r Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts) and along with his peer, Neo Rauch, he was on the forefront of painters creating a new vocabulary that combined the neo-realism prevalent in the former Eastern Germany with a surrealistic bent. Ulf Puder has had solo exhibitions at St�dtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Dogenhaus Galerie Leipzig, and Torch Gallery, Amsterdam. He has also been included in group exhibitions including Future Tense at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Archipeinture at Le Plateau, Paris and at the Camden Art Centre, London; The Painter of Modern Life, Museum de Paviljoens, Almere, NL; Kunsthaus Dresden; Museo Municipal de Malaga; and New German Painting at the Prague Biennale 2.
Ankica Marjanovic : IGRE Dec 12, 2008 � Jan 31, 2009
Kavi Gupta is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the United States of Cologne-based artist Ankica Marjanovic in an exhibition curated by Georg Elben, who is the Director of the International Videonale in Bonn, Germany.
Ankica Marjanovic�s most recent video installation focuses primarily on her investigations of memory and childhood from the Bosnian countryside where she spent the first ten years of her life. Now a resident of Germany, she recently revisited her hometown capturing familiar poignant moments acted out by the insouciant antics of the local children who inhabit the mountain village where she was raised. Marjanovic�s nostalgia is visually translated as we watch the young children perform for the camera, either through a song and dance improvisation, by playing simple games, or by enacting one of Marjanovic�s own childhood rituals. These intimate repetitive performances uniformly take place within a serene mountain landscape while the light is always soft and ethereal, occurring at dusk or dawn. Marjanovic poetically uses these visual devices to recapture moments lost while acknowledging how many scenes from her childhood remain the same.
Ankica Marjanovic was born in Rankovici, Bosnia and lives and works in Cologne Germany. Marjanovic recently had a solo exhibition at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne and has been included in group exhibitions and screenings at the Kunstlerverein Malkasten, Dusseldorf; the Folkwang School, Essen; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Kunstlerverein Malkasten, Dusseldorf.
