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until 23.06. | #3032ARTatBerlin | Galerie Kewenig Berlin presents from 28 April 2021, on the occasion of the Gallery Weekend, the solo exhibition Danach with the best-known works of the artist Christian Boltanski. Parallel to this, the solo exhibition “I (still) love the smell of oil colour in the morning” by the artist Cabrita will be shown in the gallery’s Warehouse.
Christian Boltanski | KEWENIG Berlin
After Christian Boltanski inaugurated the then newly occupied premises of the KEWENIG Gallery on Museum Island in 2013, “Afterwards” is the French artist’s second exhibition at this location. Boltanski has so far been associated with Berlin primarily through his commemorative plaques “The Missing House” (1990) in Große Hamburger Straße and his installation “Archive of German Members of Parliament” (1999) in the Reichstag building.
With an exhibition conceived as a Gesamtkunstwerk, Boltanski now occupies the entire gallery building. Part of the staging are examples of his most famous groups of works, in which the core themes of his artistic work – the transience of the individual and remembering – are present. Boltanski’s iconic installation COEUR (2005) is the centrepiece of the exhibition: throbbing bass tones penetrate all rooms of the house via loudspeakers. The recording of Boltanski’s heartbeat, accompanied by the synchronous flickering of two light bulbs and the cold flicker of fairy lights, is “the last self-portrait” of the artist and at the same time a symbol of the fragility of life and the passing of time.
Crépuscule (detail), 1996, l© Centre Pompidou / Philippe Migeat © ADAGP, Paris, 2019
Since the beginning of the Corona crisis, death has increasingly entered the public, but also the private consciousness. Against this background, the artist’s work gains an oppressive topicality.
In the darkened stairwell of the gallery, the word “After” is emblazoned in the haunting light of blue bulbs – not only a reference to the afterlife or the question of what awaits each individual after death, but also to the time after the crisis, which is longed for with great hope.
Les Archives du Coeur, 2011 © C. Boltanski, Photo: Kuge Yasuhide
CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI (*1944) is one of the most important artists of our time, whose work has been honoured internationally with the Praemium Imperiale and in comprehensive retrospectives.
Cabrita | KEWENIG Warehouse
In 2019, Cabrita has not only changed his name, but has also returned to his artistic starting point, painting. Cabrita’s exhibition “I (still) love the smell of oil colour in the morning” occupies the KEWENIG Warehouse (Wilhelmshavener Str. 7, 10551 Berlin), which is located in a historic transformer station in Moabit, and shows exclusively paintings. Painting is the basis of Cabrita’s formally versatile work. Its further development has led the Portuguese artist to sculptural and installation works and thus to a critical exchange with exhibition venues.
Cabrita, works from ‘Landscapes 2020 (series II)‘, 2020, Photo: Lepkowski Studios Berlin / Courtesy: the artist and KEWENIG Berlin
In his broad oeuvre, Cabrita has repeatedly made connections with the themes of space and memory, while eschewing any descriptive or narrative devices. His oeuvre is strongly influenced by his origins and his surroundings, and the landscape is at the centre of his painting.
His landscape paintings are therefore primarily abstract, emotional landscapes that always hint at something deeper than the eye can grasp by simply looking at nature. The exhibition features works on canvas and paper created from 2019 to the present.
CABRITA (*1956) is one of Portugal’s most important contemporary artists, who represented his country at the 50th Venice Biennale and whose work has been shown in numerous solo museum exhibitions.
Exhibition dates: Wednesday, 28 April to Wednesday, 23 June 2021
To the Gallery
Exhibition Christian Boltanski + Cabrita – Kewenig Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibition Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
