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until 12.01. | #2261ARTatBerlin | Galerie ART CRU Berlin shows from 23rd November 2018 the exhibition INNOCENCE with figurines by the artist Rudi M. Bodmeier from the studio Augustinum in Munich.
Oberschwester Eva-Maria Salat Steckrübe,
Farbstift/Fineliner auf Karton, 92 x 41 cm
He combines elements from the animal, plant and thing world with drastic exaggeration to bizarre mixed creatures. They are buxom female bodies that Bodmeier puts in tight-fitting costumes, dresses or uniforms. Female connoted attributes such as breasts and hips are overemphasized or literally exaggerated. In their coquettish to elegant poses, they are reminiscent of mannequins and fashion photography. The women become virtually depersonalized and mutate into alien, dangerous beings. His caricaturing collages can irritate and upset. But they also allow us to critically review our mass media images of femininity. Klaus Mecherlein, who has been working with the artist for years as director of the studio Augustinum, speaks of a “puzzle of pupation and transformation, exile and strangeness”, an “aura of the unredeemed” that surrounds them, these “mixed creatures of woman and animal, woman and plant, woman and object. ”
Fräulein Dibbels Dackel, 2008,
Farbstift/Fineliner auf Karton
His mostly 40-60 cm tall figures are created by the artist in a very time-consuming process. Based on a small sketch, a pencil drawing or a collage of photocopies, they are executed with black fineliner and color pencils in a clean drawing on solid paper. The drawing is then glued with wood glue on a heavy bookbinders gray cardboard and cut contour accurate with a carpet knife. The flat objects are finally, as in order to make them more durable, covered over with a protective plastic film over its entire surface.
Gräfin Margret von Ratz,
Farbstift/Fineliner auf Karton, 43 x 22 cm
Bodmeier exhibited many times, u. a. at the Museum of Everything, London, Direct Art Gallery, Düsseldorf and produced his figurines as commissioned works for the TamS Theater, Munich. He has been working on his work for over 40 years and since 2009 on the whole day in the studio Augustinum. The artist was born in Munich in May 1961. Since his earliest childhood, at the age of four, he has spent his life exclusively in various facilities and homes for the disabled. At the age of thirteen, he was admitted to the psychiatric hospital for about a year. Later he worked in the workshops for disabled people of the Attl Foundation near Wasserburg in Bavaria, where he worked mainly in metalworking production. His artistic oeuvre of about two thousand works he created at this time exclusively in his spare time and in secret, as his work and subjects were sanctioned by the institutions, defamed and his works of art were destroyed.
Die eitle Froschkönigin,
Fineliner, Buntstift auf Karton, 38 x 29 cm
Galerie ART CRU
Since 2008, Berlin has been Berlin’s only gallery for so-called Outsider Art. This term (introduced in 1972 by Roger Cardinal as a synonym of the term “Art Brut” coined by the painter Jean Dubuffet in 1945) designates the art of people with psychiatric experience or intellectual disabilities. We are convinced that the special perception of these artists is represented in unique works of art of high authenticity. With our exhibitions we present works by “outsiders” as an important part of contemporary art and thus want to stimulate an active discourse with the established art business. Located in the Kunsthof on Oranienburger Straße, the gallery brings works by people with a special experience right into the heart of Berlin’s art scene. The non-profit gallery ART CRU Berlin is sponsored by PS-Art e.V. Berlin, a network of various psychosocial institutions. Initiator of the project, director of the gallery and chairwoman of the association is Alexandra von Gersdorff-Bultmann.On the occasion of the gallery’s fifth anniversary, a chronicle has been published containing the exhibition catalogs from 2008-13. In 2014, the gallery was first able to attend the Outsider Art Fair in Paris, Europe’s most important fair for “outsider art”. In the same year, five artists from the PS-Art e.V. Berlin network were nominated for the Euward International Art Prize.
Opening: Thursday, 22nd November 2018, 7:00 pm, Exhibition Speech by Klaus Mecherlein, M.A. Leiter Atelier Augustinum & Euward-Archiv
Exhibition period: Friday, 23rd November 2018 – Saturday, 12th January 2019
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Image caption: Rudi Bodmeier, Fräulein Dibbels Dackel, 2008, Coloured pencil/fineliner on cardboard (Detail)
Exhibition Rudi M. Bodmeier – Galerie ART CRU | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
