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until 23.12. | #3689ARTatBerlin | Galerie Max Hetzler shows from 04. November 2022 (Opening: 04.11) the group exhibition BodyLand Curated by Lauren Taschen.
Ariana Papademetropoulos, Isabelle Albuquerque, Vanessa Beecroft, Ana Benaroya, Madeleine Bialke, Brian Calvin, Ann Craven, Sarah Cunningham, Karon Davis, Sky Glabush, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Ulala Imai, February James, Rae Klein, Kat Lyons, Laurie Nye, Ilana Savdie, Eleanor Swordy, Emma Webster and Alina Zamanova.
Galerie Max Hetzgel opens the group exhibition BodyLand, curated by Lauren Taschen, at Goethestraße 2/3, in Berlin. The exhibition explores the significance of nature and the body in current artistic practice and brings together a new generation of artists who respond to the present by capturing the potential of land and body as real and imaginary constructs.
BodyLand explores how representations of natural spaces and domestic environments are treated in contemporary painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. Using a variety of techniques and aesthetic devices, the artists apply psychological interpretations to nature and the human condition, providing a counterpoint to a traditionally masculine narrative. Instead of the conquest and domination of nature manifested in the depictions of victorious explorers, the exhibition presents a paradigm shift that incorporates typically feminine attributes that revolve around a harmonious ideal of reciprocity.
A selection of the works engage with traditional depictions of landscape, playfully subverting this heavily romanticised genre in the process. They reinterpret the subject by expanding the existing vocabulary of nature painting and transforming personal memories of the landscape into fantastical visions close to reality. While some works explore venerable depictions of flora and fauna, others verge on surrealist adaptations of the known world.
Other works focus on the representation of the interior space and offer an insight into an alternative pictorial universe. The historically gendered and art-historically significant domestic space is reclaimed here as a form of artistic experimentation and personal engagement. This closer look at interior spaces and the strong turn to nature and silence are also partly a result of the pandemic. This introspective look is followed by a violent re-entry into the world of protest and war, with works that capture memories of a specific moment in time.
In dialogue with both interior and exterior spaces, the human figure is omnipresent in BodyLand. In the face of global attacks on human rights and an increasing threat to women’s bodily autonomy, several of the works on display question the politics of “seeing” and “being seen” in an artificially created world.
Ultimately, this exhibition allows us to look at the natural world from a non-male point of view, an act of liberation in times of environmental exploitation and a worsening climate crisis. Human corporeality and fragility enters into unflinching and vibrant contact with the natural environment. The works bear witness to the instability of our time and at the same time inspire the imagination.
Lauren Taschen is a collector and curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. She curated Summerfest, her first exhibition in Berlin with Galerie Max Hetzler, in June 2017, with artists such as Louise Bonnet and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer.
Openning: Friday, 4. November 2022 – 18:00 until 20:00
Ausstellungsdaten: Friday, 4. November – Friday, 23. December 2022
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Image caption: Ariana Papademetropoulos, Spray from a Psychic Sea, 2022
Exhibition Lauren Taschen – Galerie Max Hetzler | Contemporary Art – Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin – Exhibitions Berlin Galerien – ART at Berlin
