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until 25.09. | #3151ARTatBerlin | GALERIE SCHMALFUSS BERLIN shows from 4th September 2021 the group exhibition HEADLESS / KOPFLOS with works by eleven artists.
Artists: Elivra Bach, Jared Bartz, Oliver Czarnetta, Laura Eckert, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, Alexander Höller, Holger Jacobs, Nikolai Makarov, Gerd Sonntag, Wolfgang Stiller und Martina Ziegler.
You become headless when you have too much on your plate. Then thinking is blocked and some things get mixed up. Visitors to the new exhibition “Headless” at the Schmalfuss Gallery in Berlin, on the other hand, can take their time to see how artistic works work within a new thematic framework and suddenly tell new stories. 11 artists, including works from the last exhibitions by Elvira Bach and Alexander Höller, reflect the theme through different materials and approaches and, through their selection, span a narrative arc between the most diverse headlessnesses … The theme is literally implemented through painting, but when Nikolai Makarov presents female nudes without heads, much more happens. What is conveyed visually eludes us through his hazy, veiling style of painting. The real is alienated. Suddenly, the head can no longer be precisely assigned.
Nikolai Makarov, Akt
Martina Ziegler blurs her portraits even more extremely, metaphorising them from painting to photograph by superficially assembling four or five facial fragments of different women into a homogeneity while at the same time questioning their credibility by blurring everything real.
Martina Ziegler, MP FACE II BECOMESABSTRACTANDTURN, 2020
The paintings by Alexander Höller and Elvira Bach, on the other hand, convey chaos in the mind through figurative representationalism.
Alexander Höller, Pavian 03, Öl, Spraypaint, Ölkreide auf Leinwand, 170 x 180 cm, 2021, © kickartmanagement GmbH
Hans-Hendrik Grimmling also places the face at the centre, rhythmising through balanced black linear structures and condensing faces into expressive metaphors of being human.
Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, Kopf III, 2014, 200 x 160 cm
The sculptural heads differ in material. Gerd Sonntag and Wolfgang Stiller work expressively in stone. The expressionless eyes testify to the tiredness in the head.
Wolfgang Stiller, 2021
Jared Bartz’s wooden heads become an expression of human misery through fissures. Protection or burden? The mighty crowns on Laura Eckert’s heads, also in wood, allow both considerations. In Oliver Czarnetta’s glass heads, the exposed nerve cords, including a mixture of traumas, shimmer through.
Finally, Holger Jacobs delivers the pure opposite of “headless” with his photographs from the supermodel era of the 1990s. In the context of the exhibition, seductive beauty questions the viewer’s headlessness.
Holger Jacobs, Christy Turlington, 1991
Vernissage: Saturday, 4 September 2021, 12:00 – 7:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 4 September to Saturday, 25 September 2021
To the Gallery
Exhibition HEADLESS / KOPFLOS – GALERIE SCHMALFUSS BERLIN – Zeitgenössische Kunst Exhibitions Berlin ART at Berlin
