Gegenstandsfreie Malerei Berlin

edgar Diehl, dr. julius | ap, Berlin, Germany, February 26-April, 2010

2010-03-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

Click here for the website of Edgar Diehl
Click here for the website of dr. juilius | ap

Arne Schreiber, Galerie Koal, Berlin, Germany, February 13-April 4, 2009

2010-02-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

Click here for Galerie Koal

Arne Schreiber analyses conditions and concepts of painting by arranging his image objects like empirical experiments. In order for a scientific test to accorded validity, the conditions under which it was carried out must be universally verifiable. In Schreiber's experimental set-up, painting is concentrated to a syntax of black lines on white background - a structure which has no discernible beginning or end. The plane itself consists of several standardised wooden panels and presents a grid structure which indicates even the smallest change as it acts like a frame of reference.

SNO 56, Assemblage No. 4, Sydney Non Objective, Sydeny, Austrailia, February 6-February 28, 2010

2010-02-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

Click here for Sydney Non Objective

Syra Gied and Nicola Stäglich live and work in Berlin, while Giles Ryder and Bonita Bub resided there until recently.

Curated by Giles Ryder

Wall work: Olivier Mosset

Assemblage artists: Eleanor Avery, Bonita Bub, Lesley Dumbrell, Janenne Eaton, Surya Gied, Lorna Grear, Katja Kollowa, Jess Johnson, Gunna Schmidt, Nicola Stäglich, Henriëtte van't Hoog, Elke Varga, Emma White.

Nicola Stäglich

Dirk Rathke, Curved Canvases, Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX, January 23-February 27

2010-02-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

Click here for Gallery Sonja Roesch
Click here for the website of Dirk Rathke

Dieter Balzer, Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX, November 7, 2009 - January 2, 2010

2009-12-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

Dieter Balzer has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984.

Click here for Gallery Sonja Roesch
Click here for the website of Dieter Balzer

Review from Artforum:
Precision in reductive-themed art is not merely essential but also the means and the end of such work. Dieter Balzer’s recent exhibition on view at Gallery Sonja Roesch exemplifies the genre’s correlation between presentation and execution. His elegantly constructed, wall-mounted linear sculptures are a delight. Brightly colored monochromatic bars overlap, intertwine, and obfuscate in prescribed rhythms that uniquely balance each piece. The artist displays an understanding of the logic of randomness, as it were, in that his creations hold steady to a purpose that is self-contained—playfully executing their own systemic patterning with grace and authority. Balzer exemplifies a mature understanding of spatial depth, both illusory and real, that makes the complicated works appear at once effortless and fully realized. References from Sol LeWitt to Jo Baer come to mind but fail to fully capture Balzer’s unique configurations, which have freshness apart from historical precedent. The wise decision to include relatively few forms in the show strengthens the presence of the artworks—each of which displays its own syncopated trajectory.

— Garland Fielder

Accrochage 2009, dr. julius | ap, Berlin, Germany, December 11, 2009-January 23, 2010

2009-12-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

Wolfgang Berndt, Stephan Ehrenhofer, Ingrid Cerny, Michaela Hofmann-Göttlicher, Javier Callejas, Rainer Gollmer

Click here for website of dr. julius | ap

Wolfgang Berndt

Stephan Ehrenhofe

Hartmut Böhm, Bartha Contemporary, London, England, December 4 - January 17, 2009

2009-12-18T09:10:00.001-08:00

Click here for Bartha Contemporary
Click here for the website of Hartmut Böhm

Elisabeth Soneck and Gracia Khouw, Galerie Hein Elferink, Staphorst, Netherlands, October 24-December 5, 2009

2009-12-18T08:40:00.000-08:00

Click here for Elisabth Sonneck's page at the Galerie Hein Efferink website
Click here for the website of Elisabeth Sonneck
Click here for the website of Galerie Hein Elfrink

Elisabeth Sonneck

Pancake Astronaut, Forgotten Bar, Berlin, Germany, December 11, 2009

2009-12-06T02:08:00.000-08:00

Paula Doepfner, Surya Gied, Gilbert Hsiao, Katja Kollowa, Ellen MacDonald, Alfons Pressnitz, Giles Tyder, Christina Stockhofe, Martin Walk, Tim Stapel, Benedikt Terwiel, Bastian Vogel, Sinta Wener, Jakob Zoche

Curated by Surya Gied

Frank Badur, Why Pattern?, fruehsorge contemporary drawings, Berlin, Germany, October 30, 2009 - January 8, 2010

2009-11-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

Click here for Frank Badur
Click here for fruehsorge contemporary drawings

Photo courtesy fruehsorge contemporary drawings/
Photo by Hans Georg Gaul

Frank Badur ‘Why Pattern’
fruehsorge contemporary drawings, Berlin
October 31 – January 8
Review by David Rhodes, Brooklyn Rail

Frank Badur has been part of the Berlin scene from the time he studied here, between 1963 and 1969. He became a professor at the University of Art in 1985, and, like many other German artists who maintain successful international careers, he has continued to teach. This has resulted in a certain continuity in German art, which makes it less subject to the vagaries of fashion that affect places like London so damagingly. His influence on many younger artists, such as Tim Stapel and Susanne Jung, who are sustaining an interest in abstraction, is becoming more evident. At fruehsorge contemporary drawings, a gallery dedicated exclusively to drawing, Frank Badur is exhibiting two groups of works on paper; concurrently, he is presenting new paintings at Hammish Morrison Galerie and an edition of prints at Galerie Jordan Seydoux, both also in Berlin.

Known as something of a Minimalist who works through series of abstractions, Badur makes meditative paintings, drawings and prints that have a particularity and at times an oddness that save them from being otherwise generic. In his drawings and prints, the line is often both lyrical and austere, and his deployment of color is intense and unexpected, sometimes suggesting partial views of unspecific objects. It is very much the case in northern Europe—especially in Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia—that a tradition continues of meditative minimalism installed in architectural settings. This coexistence of work and site emphasizes an awareness of physical being and spatial experience.

The centerpiece of the fruehsorge exhibition is a cycle of drawings called “Reflections on the Eisenman Grid” from earlier this year. It consists of 24 small-scale drawings, presented in close proximity to each other on one wall, in four rows of six. The reference is to Peter Eisenman’s “Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” located close to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Badur’s reaction to this extraordinarily charged site is modest and personal. It’s commendable that he has absolutely no desire to exploit the subject as a way of injecting meaning into a work that is otherwise potentially neutral in its formal exegesis. The visual relationship between the drawing’s linear grids and blocks of pale, muted color, and the monument’s tiled pathways and concrete stelae is clear and straightforward. Drawing here acts as mental note: a topographic memory and, as the title of the piece states, a reflection.

The use of the grid, a starting point in eliminating subjectivity as well as a standard of compositional relativity, is subtly undermined through small idiosyncrasies and acts of imprecision. The choices made are not, within this context, arbitrary: they are personal, and rational, allowing the deviation within the repetition to operate much like the sounds in a Morton Feldman composition. Feldman talked about how repetition, after a certain duration, can achieve a feeling of scale: it is no longer simply a movement from one point to an other. This has much to do with memory and the temporal experience of the works, whether listening or looking.

Sol LeWitt wrote in 1966, “The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of the premise.”
This describes a strategy that relieves the artist of subjectivity, yet Eisenman and Badur have each produced works that gain poignancy precisely from their repetitions and seriality. In the hands of administrators of mass murder, repetitive methodologies were manifested in barely conceivable acts of organized evil. There is no need for symbolism; the power of these works is in their openness to elements beyond power of decription.
In Greek tragedy, the Chorus repeated the key elements of a story to keep them in the mind of the audience; the repetitions here acknowledge the limits, or lack of them, of understanding and of summation.

Gathering, Scotty Enterprises, Berlin, Germany, November 11 - 21, 2009

2009-11-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Dan Adams, Daniel Crews, Anke Göhring, Geka Heinke, Franziska Hünig,Ilona Kálnoky, Bettina Khano, Rebecca Michaelis, Antonia Nordmann, Jens Nordmann, Katinka Pilscheur, Dirk Rathke, David Rhodes, Andreas Rosenberg, Arne Schreiber, Elisabeth Sonneck, Nicola Stäglich, Tim Stapel, Benedikt Terwiel, Bastian Vogel, Sinta Werner

Jörg Bürkle, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany, November 25, 2009 - January 8, 2010

2009-11-22T04:57:00.000-08:00

Click here for the website of Jürg Buurkle

Frank Badur, Editionen, Jordan Seydoux, Berlin, Germany, October 30, 2009 - January 8, 2010

2009-11-22T00:48:00.000-08:00

Click here for Frank Badur
Click here for Joran Seydoux

Jeremy Moon, Nymphius Projekte, November 13 - October 14, 2009, Berlin, Germany

2009-11-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

Click here for Nymphius Projekte
Click here for 2005 review of Rocket Gallery exhibition from Studio International
Click here for 2005 show at Rocket Gallery, London
Click here for 2009 show at Rocket Gallery, London

(photo by Jens Ziehe)

During the early 1960s Jeremy Moon (1936-1973/GB) began to paint as an autodidact. In his paintings the artist combined elements of the contemporary Minimal Art with the Op and Pop Art. He was concerned with an articulation of colour and space that allowed the pictures to become visual experiences for the viewer. His works clearly formulated image ideas, their stringency and their unusual, cool modernity immediately distinguished Moon as an avant-garde artist with innovative force.

Jeremy Moon’s artistic work was never about creating pictures but about questions concerning painting, which is why his work is still relevant today. In 1973 the artist died aged 37 in a motorcycle accident. His studio, crammed with paintings, remained closed for many years. While Moon’s work fell into oblivion in the public perception, it definitely remained influential for a young generation of artists. By coincidence, this treasure was recovered after 30 years. Since then, prominent institutions like Tate purchased his works. The show at Nymphius Projekte is the first solo exhibition including paintings and drawings by Jeremy Moon in Germany.

ZEROplus, 401 Contemporary, Berlin, Germany, October 23 - December 5, 2009

2009-11-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

Click here for 401 Contemporary

Otto Piene, Adolf Luther, Jacob Mattner, Fritz Balthaus, Zilvinas Kempinas, Jonas Burkhalter

Adolf Luther

A. Paola Neumann/Arjan Janssen, Galerie Hein Elferink, Staphorst, Netherlands, October 24-December 5, 2009

2009-11-13T04:27:00.000-08:00

Click here for the website of A. Paola Neumann
Click here for Galerie Hein Efferink

A. Paola Neumann was born in Berlin and has lived and worked here ever since. In case you are wondering, her later works are brushed, not sprayed.

A. Paola Neumann

Farbe Konkret, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany, November 19 - December 20, 2009

2009-11-13T02:55:00.000-08:00

Daniel Biesold, Pedro Boese, Jörg Bürkle, Christiane Conrad, Angela Dwyer, Susanne Jung, Oliver Lanz, Rebecca Michaelis, A. Paola Neumann, Sharman Riegger, Günter Scharein, Elisabeth Sonneck, Nicola Stäglich

Click here for Kunstverein Tiergarten

Top to bottom: Sharman Rieger, Suzanne Jung, Nicola Stäglich, Pedro Boese

Glasmeier - Megert - Wilding, Ketterer Kunst, Berlin, October 29 - November 18, 2009

2009-11-13T02:16:00.000-08:00

Rolf Glasmeier , Christian Megert, Ludwig Wilding, in cooperation with Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst und Design, Ingolstadt.

Rolf Glasmeier

Giles Ryder, Vectorize, Raum Weiss, Berlin, Germany, October 30 - November 27, 2009

2009-11-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

Giles Ryder is an Australian artist who lived in Berlin from 2008 to 2009 as an Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts scholar. While living in Berlin he had exhibitions at the Center for Contemporary Non Objective Art (Brussels, Belgium), Le Petit Port (Ledien, Netherlands), and now Raum Weiss in Berlin. He also curated the show Zombie Kunsthalle.

Nice mages of work from this show and biography can be found at the gallery's site here.

The following text is courtesy of Raum Weiss

Australian artist GILES RYDER is interested in factory made material taken out of our daily life. Detached from their function, they reveal unique messages that we normally do not experience through the perspective of these functions. When these materials are separated from the perception of their function and use in our society, we experience them on a completely new level.

A very important aspect of our perception changes through the processing of these materials by the artist which is no longer machine made/industrial but manual/individual. New qualities come to light, values shift, attributes such as “high” or “low” quality are adjusted by this change. Furthermore, the materials become part of a new dialog with their environment as they are exposed in their true nature. The same applies to colours; GILES RYDER aggravates their original impact by certain compositions. He also manipulates them, for instance, by working with high grade car paint or paint with glitter particles to imply quality in prefabricated aluminium parts. He plays with predetermined, factory made forms and makes some edges seem harder and some lines softer. This play with form is extended through play with light and space which creates a further level of perception. Hard lines are put in contrast with soft reflections on the surface and soft light on a non-material level. The “Cantilever” installation shows this contrast in the hard lines of coloured florescent tubes as opposed to the soft play of colours on a canvas work integrated in the installation, as well as the soft glow created by the tubes themselves.

GILES RYDER’s works need light, space and spectators to unfold. His art is in movement, in a flow, in permanent change and only comes alive through this change. Very simple experiences of perception become a fundamental, complex and very personal adventure.

In 2008, Giles Ryder was the recipient of the prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship which enabled him to study in Berlin at KH-B. He has exhibited extensively, internationally and nationally including New06 (curated by Juliana Engberg) at ACCA (Australian Centre of Contemporary Art). Recipient of the 2006 RIPE emerging artist award (ANZ and Art in Australia contemporary art award). Finalist 2006 & 2007, in the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney, recently the 2009 Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Art Award.

Axis Bold as Love, The Forgotten Bar, Berlin, Germany, November 4 - 5, 2009

2009-11-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

Jessica Buhlmann, David Evison, Torben Giehler, Terry Haggerty, Torben Höke, Peter K. Koch, Kartsen Konrad, Martin Meyenburg, Jan Muche, Tanja Rochelmeyer, Anneli Schütz, Tim Stapel, Alexander Wagner, Jens Wolf

Curated by Mallycha & Muche

Gilbert Hsiao, Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX, September 12 - October 31, 2009

2009-11-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

Gilbert Hsiao came from New York City to Berlin to live in 2008.

Ray Malone, Galerie Förster, Berlin, Germany, September 5 - October 17, 2009

2009-11-10T13:10:00.000-08:00

Ray Malone has lived in Berlin since 2007. Previously, he lived in London.

Zombie Kunsthalle, Berlin, November 1, 2009

2009-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

Curated by Giles Ryder
Lucio Auri, Dieter Balzer, Bonita Bub, Scott Chasling, Surya Gied, Tim Greaves, Gilbert Hsiao, Jeroen Jacobs, Pierre Juillerat, Katja Kollowa, Michael Kutschbach, Robert Mangold, Dennis Meier, Liam O'Callaghan, Alfons Pressnitz, Sarah Ryan, David Rhodes, Giles Ryder, Dirk Rathke, Gunna Schmidt, Philine Sollmann, Nicola Staeglich, Tim Stapel, Benedikt Terwiel, Tilman, Armando Tudela, Bastian Vogel, Beny Wagner

Abstraction and Empathy, Deutche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, August 15 -October 16, 2009

2009-08-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

Josef Albers, Michael Buthe, Philip Guston, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Blinky Palermo, Thomas Schülte

Arne Schreiber, Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin, Germany, March 21-April 25, 2009

2009-04-22T00:02:00.000-07:00