ALI ALTIN
MICHAEL BAUER
ARMIN BOEHM
MATTHIAS DORNFELD
TIM EITEL
GOTSCHA GOSALISHVLI LUDWIG KREUTZER
ALLAN RAND
CHRISTOPH RUCKHÄBERLE
YESIM AKDENIZ OLIVIA BERCKEMEYER BJÖRN DAHLEM MARCEL EICHNER MARLIZ FRENCKEN UWE HENNEKEN MAKI NA KAMURA BERND RIBBECK
Ornis A. Gallery proudly presents the group exhibition German Promises (invited by Armin Boehm.)
Nur zwei Dinge
Durch so viele Formen geschritten,
durch Ich und Wir und Du,
doch alles blieb erlitten durch die ewige Frage: wozu?
Das ist eine Kinderfrage.
Dir wurde erst spät bewußt,
es gibt nur eines: ertrage
ob Sinn, ob Sucht, ob Sage-
dein fernbestimmtes: Du mußt.
Ob Rosen, ob Schnee, ob Meere,
was alles erblühte, verblich,
es gibt nur zwei Dinge: die Leere
und das gezeichnete Ich.
(Gottfried Benn,1886-1956)
Armin Boehm (Germany, 1972): he graduated from the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2001 in the class of Konrad Klapheck and Jörg Immendorff. He lives and works in Berlin.
In his pictures he uses collage technique that leads to a haptic image surface, marked by the process of overpainting. The artist frequently adds cloth for further texture. Boehm’s works stand in opposition to the technically produced images of today. His paintings are of a material presence with a more direct access to the human consciousness. He explores the border areas of human perception between enlightened knowledge and archaic unconsciousness. The works concerns itself in ways of rendering invisibility visible. He uses the poetic potential of painting to profile contradictory states of mind. Boehm paints subjective and spatially impossible scenes, based on urban layouts and architectural constructions, that are meant to evoke the inner human condition.
Ali Altin (Germany, 1976): Altin attended the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he graduated in 2011. Mostly known for his cooperation with Jochen Goerlach, he is presented with solo work in this exhibition.
Yesim Akdeniz Graf (Turkey, 1978): in her pictures she explores the transformative and tangible state of systems and worldviews and their clashes and possible downfalls through objects from popular culture. She combines figures and motifs that are alien to each other in one single image. It is not that she wants to change or violate them, but wants to set up a dialogue.
Michael Bauer (Germany, 1973): his art can be seen as abandon composition in favour of casual gestures. In his work Bauer creates strong compositions in which figurative elements merge with abstraction. He combines the obscene with the precious and mixes components of the real world with phantasm.
Olivia Berckemeyer (Germany, 1968): for her sculptures she uses the lost wax method in which the original model from which her sculpture is cast by dripping layers of molten wax over forms. It’s thus unsurprising that her finished bronze works resemble nothing so much as the mounds of wax surrounding great candlesticks in gothic cathedrals or gradually constructed rock formation in forgotten caves.
Björn Dahlem (Germany, 1974): he makes sculptures based on space and astrophysics out of ordinary household materials. His creations are based not on stability, but on fragility which he sees as the defining condition of human knowledge.
Matthias Dornfeld (Germany, 1960): his artwork operates in the tradition of classical genres. Although his art generates a visual aesthetic that approaches to naive expressive painting as well.
Marcel Eichner (Germany, 1977): his pictures have in common that numerous bizarre, black outlined figures populate an interior space. He likes playing with the image border and creates a powerful abstract presence, with a refined sense of colour and line, that reminds to the pictorial language of comic.
Tim Eitel (Germany, 1971): the artist conflates fragments of images and memories of everyday life with print and film media, as well as the history of art in his works. Using formal, realist painting techniques, he creates disconnected worlds extracted from time, profoundly elevating
the significance of every gesture and nuance.
Marliz Frencken (Netherlands, 1955): in her sculptures Frencken examines womanhood. The females in her work are in decay, all the glitter and glamour that we mostly associate with them is faded away. The artist have always struggled with the image of women from her youth and through her work examining it and fighting it. Drips of resin and softening harsh lines emphasizing the feeling of rawness.
Gotcha Gosalishvili (Georgia, 1971): he s a self-proclaimed social mannerist. He mainly works with objects that he finds in second-hand stores. With his fascination for ordinary items, he adds painterly gestures to it to highlight the bliss of private homes and the beauty of everyday life’s banality.
Uwe Henneken (Germany, 1974): Uwe Henneken’s paintings and sculptures are subject to their own laws. With cultural and art-historical citations, he establishes an aesthetic world, which veils and challenges the spectator’s point of view concerning past, present and future. His artistic diction fictionalizes and spiritualizes the world, to make the transcendental and displaced within it apparent.
Ludwig Kreutzer (Germany, 1986): He graduated from the Universität der Künste, Berlin in 2008. His pictures contain dark ominous sceneries that is threatening and fascinating on the same time. It stimulates our perception of fear with melancholic beauty.
Maki Na Kamura (Japan): Born in Osaka, Japan, the artist lives and works in Berlin. Her work recalls European expressionism as Japanese landscape scrolls as well. However, she is not interested in labelling and wants to life a free independent international life. Her experiences of different continents with no fixed viewpoint is similar to her artwork where wich each viewing new depth can emerge.
Allan Rand (Denmark, 1983): he studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he graduated in 2014 in the class of Tomma Abts. His figurative work reminds us partly of impressio- nist-like sketches.
Bernd Ribbeck (Germany, 1974): his small-format abstract paintings are usually rendered on MDF (medium-density fibreboard) with acrylic paint and ballpoint pen. The visible coexistence of the two mediums imbuing the works with hybridity. Central to his process based works is the scraping off of layers of pigment.
Christoph Ruckhäberle (Germany, 1972): in his art he is exploring tendencies of bright colour, humour and his affinity with precisely patterned surfaces and ornaments. His pictures are a meld of formal and iconographic elements influenced by the history of Socialist Realism but fused with aspects of low and high culture as well for a refreshing finesse.