I AM A BERLINER

I AM A BERLINER

18 positions of contemporary painting

21.01. – 24.03.2012

curator: Mark Gisbourne

Artists: Martin Assig, Daniel Biesold, Norbert Bisky, Martin Borowski, Valerie Favre, Axel Geis, Katharina Grosse, Harald Hermann, Gregor Hildebrandt, Christian Hoischen, Michelle Jezierski, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, Clemens Krauss, Robert Lucander, Gerold Miller, Frank Nitsche, Peter Stauss, Miriam Vlaming

Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art | Tel Aviv, Israel

opening: 20.01.2012 | 12 pm noon

The exhibition I AM A BERLINER is devoted to leading exponents of painting from Berlin. While German painting in general has had an enormous international influence over the last thirty years, the reunification of West and East Berlin twenty years ago has created a city with an enormous number of painting platforms. It has at the same time become the platform for an enormous diversity of painting practices and approaches. The complete reorientation of German art following the reunification of the two Germanys, has led to establishing Berlin as the major city of art production in the New Germany.
Berlin is particularly rich in painterly traditions that express a diversity of approaches spanning everything from Abstraction to Expression, Symbolism and Fantasy, the Conceptual and the Minimal. But more
importantly than that there is a contemporary sense of process and painting practice that is both self-reflexive on the one hand and analytical on the other.
To focus on a city, particularly a major city of painting practice, is to stress the fact that it is not about a National School of painting (quite the reverse), but to highlight the many pluralistic approaches adopted by painters living and working in Berlin today. The title chosen I AM A BERLINER is therefore, by making reference to President Kennedy’s famous statement in Berlin following the building of the Berlin Wall, to express the idea of international inclusion, identification and association with the city. Which is to say that those who live in Berlin are all in their different ways Berliners regardless of their nationality of origin. Berlin has become quite literally a magnet for many painters, a place where painting practitioners from other parts of Germany and the wider world have gravitated in recent years. The picture that emerges as a result is not one of homogenous uniformity, but the creation of a far reaching diversity of means and plurality of visual expression.

Supported by:
Daniel Biesold
Harald Hermann | Liquidatoren | 2011
Clemens Krauss | Das Körper-Problem |2007

schir.net

I AM A BERLINER

Daniel Biesold

Harald Hermann | Liquidatoren | 2011

Clemens Krauss | Das Körper-Problem |2007