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until 27.05. | #3831ARTatBerlin | Galerie Tammen presents a duo exhibition starting April 15, 2023 of paintings by artist Armin Völckers and ceramics by artist Rosi Steinbach.
ROSI STEINBACH “Schönes Leben“, Ceramics,
The bust of Neo Rauch, he sat her model in his studio, was created in 2014, the “Rumbler” in 2020. The creator of Rosi Steinbach’s impressive works, who lives in Leipzig, never studied art. I would have liked to, but in the GDR I wasn’t even allowed to graduate from high school. I was later delegated to study engineering; as a finished graduate engineer, I served my time and had nothing to do. I came to ceramics rather by chance. I was immediately excited by the opportunity to express myself and say goodbye to my career as an engineer.” A year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her second career begins.
“Board”, 2020, glazed ceramics, painted partly gilded, wood, 40 x 120 x 20 cm.
In 1996 she establishes her own studio, regularly participates in exhibitions, accompanied by prizes and awards 2021 she receives the Grassi Prize of the Carl and Anneliese Goerdeler Foundation from the Grassi Museum of Applied Art, Leipzig. There she is also represented with her works, as well as in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in the Albertinum.
“My ceramic objects do not originate from any particular religion, cult or historical and cultural context. They are usually unpretentious, realistic representations of living beings and objects. They are things that I believe exude a certain power that, if given space to think about them, can trigger a very subjective but collectively shaped flow of associations.”
Rosi Steinbach “Savior” (man with crocodile), 2015, ceramic, glazed, height 37 cm
Her oeuvre is manifold and ranges from busts to animal figures to obiects such as a withered cactus or pieces of forest – tree stumps with mysterious applications such as gold veins – and again and again real portraits of friends or even artist portraits such as Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter and Jonathan Meese. The artist inspires not only with her technical bravura, but also with her special view of the world.
“Even though I want my ceramics to be ‘decorative,’ they go far beyond mere decoration. In a somewhat sneaky way, they are meant to please, and yet provoke at second glance and also sometimes allow frightening associations.
ARMIN VÖLCKERS, “Pfade der Erinnerung“, Painting,
“He does not seek a specific place in the painting for the elements captured by the brush during the painting process; rather, the brushstroke becomes its own cartography, effortlessly resonating with the geometry of life hidden in the mundane. The isolated brushstroke, if it can be located at all, follows the dark paths of memory barred from the glare of the spotlights of consciousness, weaving carpet patterns of the unconscious – and so these unconscious fields of force break through each application of paint, as one shifts in a dream to deeper and deeper levels of dreams within dreams.”
“Here, at this intersection of the concrete and the imaginary, where “thinking” fails, where consciousness has lost, is where artistic fascination begins. The artist is aware of the betrayal of intention – what he has so often begun, the initial aspiration to paint something born of concrete ideas is destroyed – a gradual erasure of the real for an intrinsic discovery.
Armin Völckers “Study for a Street in Sao Paulo”, 2023, oil on canvas, 90 x 140 cm
This process, an “anti-art” process if you will, of negating the imagined by the real, the real by the imagined, is not unlike Frank Auerbach’s ongoing experimentation – despite the radically different result.”
Quoted from: Rajath A. Suri, Montreal July 23, 2021
Völkers’ illustrative paintings are characterized by an enigmatic visual language. He dissolves spatial boundaries with his narrative fantasy. Although he has a distinct and typical painterly signature, he often incorporates elements of classical painting styles. This correlates with pictorial objects taken equally from everyday life, dreams, and pop culture. In his paintings, reality and the dream world are seamlessly intertwined.
Armin Völkers, born in 1963, grew up in Rio de Janeiro and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts with Dietmar Lemcke, Jens Jensen and Henning Kürschner. He lives in Berlin.
Armin Völckers, “The Note” 2023, Oil on cotton, 190 x 145 cm
Christoph Tannert, Director Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, will speak at the opening.
Opening: Saturday, 15. April 2023, 7 pm – 10 pm
Ausstellungsdaten: Saturday, 15. April 2023, until Tuesday, 27. May 2023
To the Gallery
Image caption: Rosi Steinbach, „Heroes II“, 2021/23 (Daniel Richter, Neo Rauch, Jonathan Meese), Ceramic, glazed, painted, each 44 x 24 x 15 cm
Exhibition Armin Völckers – Rosi Steinbach – Galerie Tammen | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
