Grewe collects a plethora of images, from fashion magazines, to advertisements, movie stills, and other visuals birthed by our surreal and non-hierarchical popular culture. His compositions are heavily inspired by the heroic style of classic movie poster art and the scenarios he combines become the spectacle of equally mundane and romantic, yet impossible characters evolving in bleak and impersonal corners of German suburbia.

The artist was recently showing his large format paintings on paper and canvas in Brussels, Belgium at Gallery Actionfields – which published a catalogue for the exhibition – and in Kaliningrad, Russia, at the Cultural Center of the city.

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See Part One and Part Two.

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Catherine Czacki.

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Pavel Maria Smejkal.

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Jozef Ondzik.

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Péter Szabó Pettendi.

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Bongho Ha.

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The Newest New York – curated by Lina Bertucci and Michael McKinney:

Alison Brady.

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Michele Abeles.

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Thomas Bangsted.

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Liz Magic Laser.

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Leigh Ledare.

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Ryan Pfluger.

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See Part One.

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Rossana Buremi.

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Salvatore Arancio.

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Valerio Carrubba.

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Marco Salvetti.

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Sigalit Landau. Watch an excerpt of Barbed Hula, 2000, 2 min, here and a full re-filmed version here.

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Ulrike Rosenbach.

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Peter Homola and Marko Horban.

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Maja Bajevic. Both shot by MM Green, because I don’t do flickering screens that well.

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Wall, Alena Kotzmannová. Ground, Ladislava Gažiová.

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Josef Bolf.

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Skupina Ládví Group.

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Václav Stratil.

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Qin Chong.

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Everyone went to Venice, so I stepped foot in Prague.

Set inside the Karlin Hall, a massive and grandiosely decayed former industrial space, the Biennale is in its fourth rendition and was a completely heartening surprise. The self titled “no-budget” Biennale originally started by Flash Art founder Giancarlo Politi and looks clearly held together by the fierce will of the artists, curators and gallerists who participated.

At first glance, one could have easily confused the display for another MFA show and would have left baffled and frustrated. But it was such a refreshing and compelling staging that I wandered, virtually alone in the alleys almost the whole day. I loved that the works were only lit up by natural light, offering a precious and quite unique way to look at Art; no orange spots nailing a painting nor buzzing fluorescent lights disrupting the moment. Paintings were largely present and often rather satisfying – yes, I saw you Romanian school of gorgeous darkness – but a few strong video pieces were thankfully disrupting the comfortable painterly presence.

Mostly, I appreciated the lack of condescension and the chance to see that much work coming from such unrepresented places.

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Sopho Chkhikvadze.

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Ján Vasilko.

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Alexander Tinei.

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Adrian Ghenie.

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Cantemir Hausi.

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Zsolt Bodoni.

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Bartek Materka.

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From left to right, Basia Banda, Tymek Borowski, and Lidia Krawczyk and Wojtek Kubiak.

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Dalip Kryeziu.

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Left, Lidia Krawczyk and Wojtek Kubiak. Right, Basia Banda.

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Péter Sudár.

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Between his previous and quite challenging exhibition/residency at PROGRAM and his future show «Workshop 20’09» «My Love, My Friends» at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the artist has been pretty busy. We talked about expatriation, our mutual excitement on living in Berlin and politics. Political voices thoroughly direct Ariel’s work yet, he also infuses and combines passionately intimate moments to these video, photographic and performance based conversations. I liked the quiet rage I could feel from the polished photographs, the echoing of his unusual upbringing with the current, and quite loud questionings on identity, nationalism and human relationships.

Ariel Reichman was born in South Africa in 1979 and immigrated to Israel in 1991. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and at the U.D.K. Berlin. Reichman was awarded the lbb Prize for Photography by the Karl Hofer Foundation in 2008. He lives and works in Berlin.

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July 2006 Untitled 1, 2007, pigment print on paper, 1 x 1.5 meter. Image via whitehot magazine.

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Installation shot of Legal Settlement, a six weeks performance/residency by the artist at PROGRAM, April 15 – May 31, 2009. Image via PROGRAM.

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Route 442 Maale Bet Choron, 2007, pigments print on rag paper, 80 x 100 cm. Image via Galerie Bannwarth, from the exhibition How Can I Say Something About Them If You Don’t Know Who I Am, 2008.

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Installation shot of Legal Settlement, a six weeks performance/residency by the artist at PROGRAM, April 15 – May 31, 2009. Image via PROGRAM. Watch the video of the performance here.

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Relic of the performance. Clay-ed underwear.

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The posters advertising this show were wallpapering the entire city. As it is always quite difficult for me to avoid any promises of more Douglas Gordon, on I went.

DOX is a new gigantic and sleek exhibition space for contemporary art here in Prague – it opened last October – and felt like the perfect habitat for Gordon’s work. The hung screens were so thin and discreet that it was like bathing in pure light and darkness. I loved watching 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and to and Fro, 2008, which was presented in Europe for the first time, while the thunderous soundtrack from Feature Film, 1999, was playing from upstairs. So intense and hypnotic.

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Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work From About 1992 Until Now, ongoing.

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Douglas Gordon Sings ‘The Best of Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground’ (for Bas Jan Ader), 1993

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From the press release:

As in all his work Harris displays a gift for direct observation creating paintings that depict what he actually sees, not as a photographer might, but in reaction to the play of light on a rich variety of surfaces and structures. To date most of his paintings have been made in the open so this sequence inside an ancient building is, in some ways a new departure. It is not the spiritual associations of the building which influence his work so much as the “feel” of the building as it changes mood according to the light that falls on its Candelabra and stone fabric. Harris reveals in his paintings wonderful patterns created by the furnishings of the venerable building with its old oak pews, wooden joists and tracery windows. It is his great gift to reveal a beauty which is there but has to be discovered by the artistic heart and eye.

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I didn’t care much for the work itself but the space was an incongruous surprise. But you knew I was rather biased when talking about domestic settings. I could do without the beige walls but 60’s ugly patterned couches are always welcomed.

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From the press release:

Neufeldt will transform the gallery into an uncanny space, which challenges the senses of the viewer. The continuous rattling of a machine, the sporadic falling of sawdust through the air, a video projection at the other end of the room – eyes, ears, need to be alert to capture the diverse elements that inhabit this room. Placed in the uncommonly dimensioned space, they evoke feelings of constraint but also of affright within the viewer. Neufeldt is interested in exactly these moments of unpredictability and uneasiness that counteract the expectations of the audience.

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From the press release:

For the first time, the complete series “Soldier Studies” will be shown at the Dircksentrasse gallery, in juxtaposition with new watercolours and drawings presented at our space in Markgrafenstrasse.

This partition of exhibition spaces highlights a fundamental theme in Dammann‘s work: the relationship of painting to photography, what they represent; what must be and what can‘t be painted. All shown works are based on photographs that were mainly found in soldiers’ photo albums. The watercolours and drawings however don’t constitute a series; they are individual, independent pieces, to be apprehended separately. Each work is autonomous and arises from the development of its own particular logic.

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