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until 22.04. | #3808ARTatBerlin | ARTES Berlin presents from 11. March 2023 the group exhibition HALBGÖTTER by the artists Georg Baselitz, Helge Leiberg, Markus Lüpertz, Edvardas Racevicius and Nikolaos Schizas.
From the Renaissance to the present day, ancient mythology has inspired artists in their work and we encounter it, as it were, in the everyday world. The myths have lost none of their topicality; they are narratives about family, power, love, happiness and tragedy, but also humour – all of which are also basic human themes that are reflected in visualisation and interpretation. The exhibition brings together sculptures, paintings and editions that deal with historical and contemporary images of heroes in very different ways.
Markus Lüpertz, Zodiac sign, SCHÜTZE, 2018, sculpture bronze, hand-painted
Many people know the painter, sculptor and graphic artist Georg Baselitz, born in 1938, primarily because his motifs are upside down – his unmistakable trademark since the early 1970s. In his search for “the picture behind the picture”, he thus creates a completely new way of seeing. But Baselitz not only turns everything upside down in art, he also likes to take on the role of the troublemaker and provocateur in other ways. The cycle of works entitled “Heroes” caused a scandal in the mid-1960s; today they are icons of art history. Following a court order, two of his paintings were removed from an exhibition on the grounds of “lewd depictions” and the artist was charged and sentenced for causing public nuisance, but the Federal Supreme Court overturned the verdict. This public discussion about artistic freedom gave Baselitz a high profile.
Helge Leiberg, born in Dresden in 1954, studied at the Dresden University of Fine Arts. Music runs like a thread through the work of the multimedia artist, who realised numerous music projects with A.R. Penck, among others. Leiberg’s world of paintings and sculptures consists of sign-like figures, slender, with overlong limbs and expansive gestures. Their dancing gestures reveal pure life: sometimes oblivious, sometimes interacting, they express affection and aversion, struggle and union. His masterly lines and the virtuoso representation of movement characterise his work. Leiberg draws inspiration from the mutual influence of painting, dance and music.
Markus Lüpertz, born in 1941 in Reichenberg in Bohemia, is known as an eccentric prince of painters. However, he is internationally recognised for his artistic work. In his extensive oeuvre, figurative and abstract work phases alternate. In the 1960s and 1970s, he created his “dithyrambic” works, whose stylistic characteristics are above all pathos, theatricality and classicising components. Especially in the 1980s Lüpertz paraphrased works by the painter Nicolas Poussin. Another new phase in his work can be discerned in the 1990s. The Bible and legends now become a theme not only in paintings but also in sculpture.
Edvardas Racevicius, Untitled, 2022, sculpture, painted lime wood
The traditional icon carving of his native Lithuania fascinated the artist Edvardas Racevicius as a child because of its simple language of form and its spiritual aura. At the age of 17, he formed his first sculpture with an axe from a block of wood, which, according to the artist himself, enchanted him and today inspires his humorous and enchanted works. Working both with a chainsaw and by hand, Racevicius thematises the relationship of the human individual to nature in his works, whereby the wood, which always remains visible, is just as important to him as his figures themselves. The protagonist, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, the recurring figure in his work, seems to literally grow out of the tree trunk. The artist mostly refrains from fleshing out the faces and heads and instead shows cubist-looking, abstract form constructions.
As young and contemporary as the paintings of Nikolaos Schizas may seem at first glance, the Greek artist is nevertheless moving in the long tradition of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1950s, Jackson Pollock revolutionised painting: instead of fixing the canvas to the easel, he laid it directly on the floor. He exchanged the brush for sticks and spatulas and used them to let the paint drip onto the huge painting supports. Schizas moves in this tradition both in form and content. He does not build up a picture in a strictly planned way, but rather in a spontaneous gesture controlled by the subconscious. This results in strongly flowing, colourful formations that fix the gestural moment on the canvas. Nikolaos Schizas, who lives and works in Barcelona, transfers informal painting into the present.
Opening: Saturday, 11. March 2023, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 11. March to Saturday, 22. April 2023
To the Gallery
Bildunterschrift Titel: Georg Baselitz, The Rebel,1965, drypoint and aquatint etching
Exhibition HALBGÖTTER – ARTES Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin – Contemporary Art | Exhibitons Galleries Berlin | ART at Berlin
