Past
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Axel Geis – Modena
24 October - 23 November 2006 Wentrup We take pleasure in announcing the second exhibition of works by Axel Geis at Galerie Jan Wentrup, which will open on September 30, 2006. On this occasion, the first catalog about the artist will be published.
Since his first exhibition at the end of 2004, Geis has been able to establish himself successfully, and his paintings have attracted considerable art-critical attention. His works are today not only in important international private collections, but also in the public collections of the Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken and the Kunsthalle Mannheim. Furthermore, until October 22, the Kunsthalle Mannheim is also hosting a special exhibition of Geis’ works as part of the show Full House—Gesichter einer Sammlung.
In November, paintings by Geis will be on view at Fondazione Mudime in Milano. In his oil paintings, Axel Geis (born 1970) addresses the human figure. In undefined or only sparingly equipped visual spaces, these figures have a presence that is difficult to determine. His paintings are characterized by an atmosphere somewhere between familiar and strange. The portraits of individual people or, recently, also groups of people, seem strangely removed or, when they look directly at the beholder, focused only on themselves.
In the catalog, the Berlin art historian Sven Beckstette writes: „Obviously, for Geis the human figure is at the centre of his work. But the point for him is not copying a model. The pictures are always painted on the basis of reproductions. Apart from family photographs or photographs staged by himself, it is also film stills that can serve as a point of departure for the paintings. A systematic procedure behind the selection of what is to be painted cannot be assumed. Geis, for example, does not search through a filmic canon or specific genres, rather, his subjects are based on accidental finds, without any attention to their artistic or film historical value. [...]
So even if Geis takes film images as points of departure for some of his paintings, he nonetheless does not belong to those artists who since the 1970s have been working on topics related to the cinema, its aesthetics and mechanisms. Star cult, optics, production methods, and the iconography of film do not interest him, that much is certain. The images of the cinema offer the immediate occasion for the painting, but are not a reason for an intense engagement with the cinema itself. If we look more closely at Geis’ treatment of his models, regardless of whether they come from films or photographs, then it becomes clear that through the transfer into painting a process of abstraction takes place in which the sources are disguised.“ Read more -
Gregor Hildebrandt – Von den Steinen zu den Sternen
24 June - 27 July 2006 Wentrup The art of Gregor Hildebrandt (born 1974) can best be described by the concept of
conceptual image creation, although this too opens up a conceptual pigeonhole
in which the artist is difficult to categorize.
Since 1999, Gregor Hildebrandt has been working with cassette tape and since 2003 with
video tape as his preferred material. In closely adjacent strips, canvases are
completely or partially covered, paper works and sculptures are created, or even
entire house walls and rooms are draped. The coated surface of the tapes
creates a reflection of light and the surrounding space, which never makes the image
appear the same. The austerity of Hildebrandt's works only seemingly evokes
associations with formal reductions known since the 1960s. The minimal in Hildebrandt's work never appears value-free, but is instead poetically charged. In the painting "The Carny N.C. (San Michele)" (274 x 447 cm, 2004), for example, the silhouette of the cemetery island San Michele of Venice is outlined in the lower third. While in this area the raw canvas is visible and the island with surrounding water is imagined, Hildebrandt has covered the upper part of the sky completely with cassette tape. The tape here, as always in the works of Gregor Hildebrandt, is not merely a material, but also a carrier of meaning insofar as the tapes are always carriers of music. In this case, it is the song "The Carny" by the Australian singer Nick Cave. The immateriality of the music intertwines in its meaning with the subject of the canvas painting.
The conceptual in Hildebrandt's work is evident precisely in this questioning of visibility. The idea takes the place of concrete realization, of pure illustration.
The viewer is no longer fixed on mere perception, but finds themselves challenged to reflect on the open form according to their own ideas. This individual appropriation in Hildebrandt's work, however, never leads to a dissolution of the materiality of the work, but ties it back to the form of the panel painting. Read more
