Tag: 2010
2THEWALL
Copenhagen Graffiti
Daniele Buetti @ Nicola von Senger
Peter Land working//
Collier Schorr
Copenhagen Graffiti//
New walls:::
Artist web// Jan S. Hansen
THOMAS PALME (DE) | LOST OR DAMNED!
Galleri Christoffer Egelund is proud to present the German artist Thomas Palme’s first big solo exhibition in Denmark, Lost or Damned! In this exhibition Palme will present a series of new black/white pencil drawings and a small installation. The title of the exhibition, Lost or Damned!, refers directly to Søren Kierkegaard’s famous book whose Danish title is Enten – Eller (Either – Or), and points towards the artist’s existence. Like everybody else, he has to find his own way in life. Visitors to the exhibition will be presented with, amongst others, portraits of artists and philosophers with animals’ heads, for instance Gérard de Nerval, Vincent van Gogh and Arthur Schopenhauer. Most of these were hesitant in their approach to life and had a good deal of experience with anxiety, trembling and quivering. As Palme himself describes it: “Most of them only had to decide between: to be Lost or Damned”. The animals’ heads refer to the persons’ real character and the eternal connection between artist and nature and life’s merciless circle from birth to death. Through quotes in the works it becomes clear that Palme moves between and combines elements from the metaphysical, historical, scientific, religious and philosophical spheres. This crossing is not just a quest for answers to existential questions, but also an opening to change where new opportunities emerge.
The black/white pencil drawings which make up the majority of Palme’s practice are created with both the right and the left hand at the same time, creating an altogether unique energy and dynamism which in a compelling way unfolds in the area of tension between fine portraits and chaotic abstraction. There is a multitude of forces and energies at work and mutually at odds in Palme’s works. There is always a fight going on between what we can understand or identify as part of our history and what is shrouded in mysticism.
Thomas Palme (b. 1967) was educated at Vienna, Munich and Düsseldorf. He has received, amongst others, the ‘New Talent’ award at Art Cologne in 2006, and most recently he received a scholarship from Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, where he will also have a solo exhibition in 2010. Most recently, Thomas Palme has exhibited at the Museum of Art in Nocciano, Italy, Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Schleswig-Holstein, Overbeck-Gesellschaft in Lübeck, Kunsthall Moosalpe, and he is represented at such collections as Pinakothek der Moderne’s permanent art collection in Munich.
MICHEL FRANÇOIS
Bortolami is proud to present the third solo show by Michel François. For this installation François exhibits the third in a series of works called Pavilion Interface.
The pavilion is a large cubic glass box which becomes the stage of a private performance by the artist; what the audience sees in the gallery is the consequence of his actions. A cube of multi-colored plasticine modeling clay sits in the center of the box and prior to the opening François aggressively splatters handfuls of the plasticine onto the glass walls. For more than twenty years Michel François has been creating installations using sculpture, photography, film and video. It has been written about his very recent show at SMAK: “[it] is conceived like a journey through the material processes of human inventiveness and creativity. Endlessly recycling discarded materials, elemental resources and seemingly valueless matter this exhibition shows how we both make and unmake the human world we inhabit and how this reflects the simple beauty and essential fragility of humanity.”
Michel François was born in 1956 in Saint-Trond, Belgium. Recent solo exhibitions include SMAK in Ghent, Belgium and Hespérides I, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Frac Haute-Normandie, Rouen; Frac Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France; CC, Belgium; Maison de la culture d’Amiens, France; Art Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Space Vox, Montreal; CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, Germany; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Center for Photography, Geneva, Switzerland and Fondatión Miró, Barcelona; Kunsthalle Bern, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. François’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions such as, “Recent Video from Belgium,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, The 49th Venice Biennale – where he represented Belgium together with Ann Veronica Janssen, the São Paolo Biennial XXII, and Documenta IX. The artist currently lives and works in Brussels.