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until 27.10. | #2147ARTatBerlin | Kewenig presents from 8th September 2018 the exhibition Window with works of the artist Sean Scully and Henri Matisse.
“Window. [What] I’ve always been very interested in is the concept of the window. Windows have something very moving. (…) A window is a promise, like a doorway. A facade is never completely without mercy, because of the window and the door. That gives the wall something human. “1
KEWENIG is particularly pleased to open an exhibition on September 7 with works by Sean Scully (born in Dublin in 1945) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Scully is recognized worldwide as one of the most important abstract painters of the present and has dedicated most of his work to the motif of horizontal and vertical color blocks and stripes. He continues this motif spatially in his monumental sculptures, which will receive their biggest presentation so far (29.09.2018 – 06.01.2019) in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Europe’s most important sculpture garden. In his extensive oeuvre, however, he goes far beyond this formal vocabulary and deals, inter alia, with the interrogation of interpersonal relationships. The individual works develop a romantic to melancholy aura. Scully’s historical works from the 1980s to new paintings and works on paper meet in the gallery’s Berlin exhibition in the interior of the gallery in the ‘Interior in Etretat’, a painting by Henri Matisse from 1920, which is from the State Museums to Berlin, National Gallery, Museum Berggruen, could be obtained as a loan from private ownership.
Scully became interested in the idea of the window as an image in the image towards the end of the 1980s, and captured this motif in paintings and graphic works as well as photographically. In numerous lectures and writings he has repeatedly emphasized his admiration for Henri Matisse and the importance of dealing with his work for his painting. To this day, Scully’s artistic work is strongly influenced by Matisse in his consistent work with Streifen and especially in his ‘Window Paintings’. ‘Interior in Etretat’ is a wonderful example of Matisse’s many interiors with windows that inspire Scully to this work complex. In the small-format interior, a window opens onto the harbor of the northern French town of Etretat, where Matisse spent part of the summer in 1920. The subdued color of the painting captures the mood and light of the sky, which is often clouded on the French north coast near the Channel, and differs greatly in this respect from the radiant palette of Nice’s works of the painter, for whom he is the leading figure in the French Expressionist group the Fauves is known. Even Scully often chooses his colors directly from the nature that surrounds him. Landline Blue Green ‘(2016) oil painting is an example of Scully’s Landlines’ work type, in which wide beams in their horizontal arrangement recall the clash of land, sea and sky, and which at the same time features the Matisse ‘palette’ for him typical bright blue, takes up.
The reference to the colourfulness of Matisse ”s interiors is particularly evident in the paper works of the exhibition, such as the watercolor, Window 5.18.18′ (2018) as well as the pastels ‘Windows 5.12.18’ and ‘Landline 5.15.18’ (2018). The striking juxtaposition of color patches, the overlay and juxtaposition of patterns, and the repetitive design of surfaces are further borrowings from Scully’s to Matisse, who featured in the exhibition for example in oil paintings such as ‘Mirror Maroon’ (2015) and one of his most recent aquatint series be seen this year.
“What interested me about Matisse [paintings] was the repetition in them, the use of patterns, the decorative. He fills space, decorates space, he emphasizes space.”
Sean Scully lives and works in Upstate New York and in the Bavarian Königsdorf, where he runs another studio in Berlin. His works have appeared in more than 200 solo exhibitions, such as the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow (2017), the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2016), the Pinacoteca do Estado do São Paulo (2015), the National Gallery of Ireland (2015) , the Venice Biennale (2015), the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2014), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2012-13), the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris (2007), the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (2004 ); the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (2004), the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, D.C. (2001-02) and the Lenbachhaus in Munich (1989).
This year alone, no less than eight institutions are dedicated to the artist’s extensive solo exhibitions, including the State Russian Museum – The Marble Palace, St Petersburg, the State Art Gallery Karlsruhe, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC In 2019 he will appear in other institutional exhibitions at the Atheneum in Hartford, CT, the LWL Museum of Art and Culture in Münster, and again at the Venice Biennale in San Giorgio Maggiore and Villa Panza to be represented in Varese.
Scully’s work is featured in numerous museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY; the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C .; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; the San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Tate, The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Neue Pinakothek, the Municipal Gallery in Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; the National Museums, Kassel; the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Städel Museum, Städel’s Art Institute and Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main; the Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfalen K20K21, Düsseldorf; the Albertina, Vienna; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the IVAM – Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia; the Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou; China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
Vernissage: Friday, 7th September 2018, 6 pm – 9 pm
Exhibition period: Saturday, 8th September – Saturday, 27th October 2018 (Please note that for this exhibition the gallery is exceptionally closed on Mondays!)
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Image caption: Mirror Maroon, 2015, Oil on linen, 9.2 x 5.2 in. ( 150.4 x 140 cm) © Sean Scully, courtesy the artist
Exhibition Sean Scully – Window | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
