OPENING SOON:

JONATHAN MEESE: EVOLUTION de LARGE (ICH-TEA-OHHH-SAURYS)

February 4 – April 15, 2012

Artistically untamed, but at the same time representing intellectual ferocity, Jonathan Meese (b. 1970) cultivates an energetic, provocative persona, which is matched only by his pictorial style. He is an artist, who views art and life as a dynamic play with symbols, identities and predicates. Under the title ‘The Dictatorship of Art’ Jonathan Meese is advocating for art as a new power in society and for art’s unlimited potential. The exhibition at GL STRAND continues the vision of ‘The Dictatorship of Art’.

Jonathan Meese’s works represent an impulsive, dynamic and confrontational game with identities and symbols. Since the end of the 1990s Meese has made his mark on the international art scene with works that through a spontaneous and expressive form confront the viewer in a direct way. The exhibition in GL STRAND presents the whole spectrum of Meese’s art including sculptures, assemblages, installations and paintings. The exhibition will have a strong focus on Meese’s work as a painter and his performative practice.

The subjects of Meese’s universe suggest a new reading of historical and literary icons and popular culture’s idols. The historical figures count among others Hitler and Stalin and appear detached from their original contexts. The artist himself appears as a recurring motif or a dominant character. Meese thus plays on a traditional notion of the artist as performer, cult figure and seducer.

The title of the exhibition, EVOLUTION de LARGE (ICH-TEA-OHHH-SAURYS), is teasing and reflects life and the creative process as an inevitable dynamic evolution where we draw strength from both history and ourselves. However, the title should be seen as an eye-opener rather than as a direct meaning-giving framework for the works in the exhibition.

“Jonathan Meese’s works are mad and grotesque, but also visually generous, expressing an overproduction and a willingness to challenge, amuse and confuse, which in the end will make room for reflection. At the exhibition, we will find ourselves in a state of color intoxication in various materials and expressive gestures, which allows us to savor the moment while historical characters and events are intruding.” Curator at GL STRAND, Pernille Fonnesbech.

Jonathan Meese was born in 1970. He lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. Since his time at the academy in Hamburg in the mid 1990s he has been among Germany’s most important contemporary artists, following in the footsteps of Georg Baselitz and Martin Kippenberger in his reinterpretation of expressionist art.

CATHRINE RABEN DAVIDSEN: HOUSE OF THE AX

February 4 – April 15, 2012

Cathrine Raben Davidsen (b. 1972) is known for her painterly personifications where she balances minutely detailed line drawing with dissolved, blurred contours and intense patches of color. In her works she draws on a wide range of literary and art historical references, narratives and mythological material

In her new works, done specifically for the exhibition HOUSE OF THE AX, Raben Davidsen strikes more intense, dramatic note than hitherto. Rather than the earlier so characteristic pastels and bright neon shades, the colours are now saturated and the brush-strokes firmer. The choice of materials ranges wide, from monumental charcoal and ink draw­ings, ceramic jars, prints, and small oil paintings on linen to embroidered fur masks, and sounds.

Material from personal memory in the form of pictures from the artist’s journeys or of family members form part of the exhibition on an equal footing with the many references to art history and mythological narratives. The audio aspect, which consists of the mechanical whirring of her father’s sewing machine, has associations going back to the artist’s childhood and her father’s work as a fashion designer. The exhibition thus takes on the character of a sampling, where various impressions appear side by side across time and space.

In the exhibition Cathrine Raben Davidsen has found inspiration in among other things the labyrinth and the spiral; both motifs are ancient symbols of growth, spiritual development, the journey and transformation. Of the title of the exhibition, HOUSE OF THE AX, she says: “ The title involves a kind of foreboding, a sense that something is about to happen, or has just happened. At the same time it refers to the Labyrinth of King Minos, which was made so that once you were in, there was no way out again. The exhibition is built up as a tightly enclosed universe where the journey can go in many directions.”