English
Deutsch
until 01.06. | #4250ARTatBerlin | Galerie Judin shows from 27. April 2024 (Opening: 26.04.) the exhibition Ohne Lippen sind die Zähne kalt by the artist Cornelia Schleime.
Cornelia Schleime, who turned 70 in 2023, is the Grande Dame of German painting. She is the great observer and storyteller par excellence, who light-footedly merges reality and fantasy into visually powerful compositions, pursuing German Romantic traditions in a way that is as clever as it is aesthetically pleasing. Since the 1990s, she has predominantly portrayed compelling, imaginary characters in her paintings, whose presence and expressiveness easily fill pictorial spaces of her mostly large works. The figures are always self-confident, independent and unbending and thus speak out against heteronomy, egalitarianism and oppression. There is usually also a hint of defiance in their eyes. It is the legendary “oppositional gaze” of Schleime’s characters. And it is also a manifestation of the artist’s own oppositional gaze, who once said that she always paints her figures as alter egos. The artist’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Judin is dedicated to such portraits, all created during the last 10 years.
Cornelia Schleime was born in East part of Berlin in 1953, where she trained as a hairdresser and make-up artist before she took up her studies in painting in Dresden. Her interest in revealing the different “faces” of people is apparent from an early stage and were to become a common thread in Schleime’s work. The intense spying and harassment she endured from the GDR regime, before she was finally allowed to leave for the West in 1984, sharpened her sensitivity towards the individual in the field of tension of its social and political conditions. The portraits at the center of this exhibition present themselves as lessons learned from these experiences. Ultimately, each of Schleime’s works revolves around the uniqueness, dignity and sovereignty of the individual. The artist can now look back on an oeuvre that is not only of art-historical but also of political significance.
On the occasion of Schleime’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Judin, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König will publish the first volume of her catalogue raisonné, which compiles the photographs that document the artist’s performances, along with Super 8 films shot between 1978 and 1984 – all created in the GDR as protest against the SED regime.
Opening: Friday, 26. April 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 27. April – Saturday, 1. June 2024
To the Gallery
Image caption: Cornelia Schleime, Von hier nach dort verliert sich der Ort, 2020, acrylic, asphalt varnish, and shellac on canvas, 200 × 340 cm
Exhibition Cornelia Schleime – Galerie Judin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
