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extended until 24.08. |#2501ARTatBerlin | Galerie Dittmar shows from 21st June 2019 an exhibition with sculptures and drawings by the artist Rainer Kriester.
“I’m a realist by nature, but I don’t work realistically.
I’m not an abstractor, but I’m searching for abstraction.” (R. K.)
Rainer Kriester (1935-2002) is one of the most distinguished sculptors of the later 20th century. The relocation of the focus of his work to Castellaro near Vendone in Liguria in 1982 marked a turning point in his oeuvre. The expressive, violent and painful expression of the earlier works is sublimated, the power is transferred to the inside, the statement is transformed into the symbolic. The sensual qualities of the material, limestone, marble, are revealed. The drawings accompanying the sculptural work play a special role.
Since the first major exhibition in 1975 at the Schoss Charlottenburg, Berlin, numerous museum exhibitions with accompanying publications, such as 1982 at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, 1985 at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin and at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Genoa. 1993-1994 follows the touring exhibition “Scultura-Natura” over six stations, 1999 Den Haag, 2000 “Der mediterrane Traum” at the Pergamonmuseum Berlin. In 1997 and 2003 the catalogue of works was published by Hirmer Verlag in Munich. Works in public space in Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA; in Berlin, among others, in the Federal Chancellery.
Rote Figur III, 1988, roter Kalkstein, 24,5 x 15 x 15 cm
“The geometric structures are not arbitrarily imposed on the heads and stelae of Kriesters. They are derived from nature, they refer to man’s attempt to respond to the great processes of nature, the course of the sun, the course of the stars. They refer to the striving that has accompanied man for thousands of years to explore the laws of nature”. Each of the stone heads of Kriesters is complete in itself. He lacks nothing. The same applies to his stelae and the calendar stones. They are Janus-faced insofar as they point to different hemispheres. But the two hemispheres are nothing else than past and future. The past is the prehistoric, the archaic, the mythical, the future is the time for which the sculptures are made, it encompasses the dimension in which they are supposed to work. (Wieland blacksmith)
“Kriester’s work on mighty limestone blocks produced a new, strictly closed basic form in which notches are punched into a geometric pattern. These notched lines lay a structure over the heads, which they emphatically objectify, as if they belonged in a much wider context. The score lines refer to a higher order, a pattern of foreign reason that frees the heads from their daily suffering and life constraints. What Kriester’s sculpture always impressed, namely the plastic structure gained from the form, now clearly emerges from itself.” (Jens Christian Jensen)
Schwarzes Fragment, Sonnenzeichen, 1990,
Schwarzer Marmor, 55 x 83 x 23 cm
“Kriester’s sculptures reveal his will to oppose reality and senselessness with hope. Although they are reminiscent of Neolithic menhirs or dolmens, they are not archaic symbols, but rather symbols of our time, expressions of challenge and pride. They oppose the dominant nature with their powerful presence – signals or emblems”. His ‘fragments’, which are in themselves perfect, are not to be understood as a tendency towards aestheticism. The figures, translated into metaphor, lose their physicality and become universally valid, without ever denying the original source of the imagination. (Mario De Micheli)
Vernissage: Friday, 21st June 2019, 7 pm
Ausstellungsdaten: Friday, 21st June to Saturday, 10th August 2019 – extended until 24. August 2019!
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Image caption: Rote Figur III, 1988, red limestone, 24,5 x 15 x 15 cm
Exhibition Rainer Kriester – Sculptures and Drawings – Galerie Dittmar | Contemporary Art in Berlin – ART at Berlin
