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until 24.02. | #4136ARTatBerlin | neugerriemschneider presents from 27. January 2023 the exhibition “The man who disappeared (amerika)” by the artist Antje Majewski. This is the artist’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.
Antje Majewski’s ninth solo exhibition at neugerriemschneider, the man who disappeared (america), comprises a complex of paintings, videos and documents that the artist developed during her residency at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2022. In it, she explores the life of her great-great-great-great-uncle, the artist Georg Pflugradt (later anglicised as George Pflugradt), who travelled from Leipzig to New York in the mid-19th century and crossed the Midwest of the USA via the California Trail before finally settling in Los Angeles. Majewski uses this endeavour as an artistic exploration of migration and colonial land-grabbing in order to shed light on their enduring impact in today’s North American and European subconscious.
The man who disappeared (amerika) is based on letters that Pflugradt wrote to his parents, siblings and friends between 1848 and 1851. In the four detailed reports, each spanning several months, of which typewritten copies are on display, he describes the impressions, joys and hardships of his journey by sea and land. In a group of paintings entitled Unreliable Images (2023), Majewski explores alternative representations of these accounts, which emerge from the interface between what is read and what is seen. With the help of artificial intelligence, which generates images from the input of prompts – in this case descriptive passages from Pflugradt’s letters – and the abundant visual material on the Internet, she imagines the scenes described in a way that Pflugradt could have depicted them in his works. These technically generated composites of a collective visual memory serve her as a basis for modifying them and undermining and interpreting the sterile, ahistorical compositions through her painterly process. Her paintings represent a land once idealised as a promise in the context of its transformation, the result of centuries of colonisation and exploitation. They question the German-American identity with regard to the reasons for the development of this diaspora as well as its similarities and differences to today’s migration stories. By reconstructing the past in speculative form, Majewski emphasises the fallibility of memory and builds on earlier works in which she explores our relationship to the past.
In her film A Journey in Reverse (2023), Majewski follows in the footsteps of her great-great-great-uncle by train and car in the opposite direction. The journey begins in Los Angeles – the city where Pflugradt arrived in 1850 and where he probably succumbed to cholera – before heading east and ending in New York. Filmed snapshots document their journey and bear witness to the dramatic change in the landscape over time, in which the sustainable use of the land by the indigenous population was largely replaced by intensive agriculture and the extraction of fossil fuels. In parallel, Majewski reads excerpts from Pflugradt’s letters translated into English, adding new visual layers to his written experiences and building a bridge between images, narratives and eras. Her journey is complemented in the exhibition space by photographs taken in the many history museums along the route. These glorify white pioneer history with dioramas, display panels and surreal compilations of historical artefacts, while reducing the fate of the indigenous people to a footnote. Other components of the exhibition include the artist’s personal notebook with watercolours and a family portrait from 1840, in which Pflugradt can be seen as a child.
Works by Antje Majewski (b. 1968) have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in international museums and institutions, including Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun (2021); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018); Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv (2016); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2016); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2015); Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (2014); Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin (2013); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2013); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (2013); Villa Romana, Florence (2012); Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main (2012); Kunsthaus Graz, Graz (2011); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2008) and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2001). Majewski lives and works in Berlin and Himmelpfort.
Location : Linienstraße
Opening : Friday, 26. January 2024, 6pm until 9pm
Exhibition dates : Saturday, 27. January until Saturday, 24. Februart 2024
To the Gallery
Image caption: © Antje Majewski, Galerie neugerrriemschneider
Exhibition Antje Majewski – Galerie neugerriemschneider | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
