





Simone Haack
HAIR
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Editor(s) | Städtisches Museum Engen + Galerie |
Author(s) | Sebastian C. Strenger, Velten Wagner |
Design | Benjamin Wolbergs |
Size | 21,5 x 27 cm |
Cover | Softcover with flaps |
Pages | 128 |
Illustrations | 70 |
Language(s) | German, English |
ISBN | 978-3-96912-154-2 |
Simone Haack (b. 1978 in Rotenburg/Wümme, lives and works in Berlin) has always made the inwards legible in the outer appearance of her figures in her painting. This is also the case in her block of works in the exhibition of the same name, Hair. Already in the late 17th century, magic and superstition were attributed to hair. In it one suspected the whole power of the soul. The artist, who was formed in the painting class of Katharina Grosse and Karin Kneffel, symbolically reveals the fragility of the DNA of human beings through her hair landscapes, which are sometimes placed macroscopically in the picture in the spirit of a New Magic Realism. At the same time, her accompanying exhibition publication always also tells of the triangle of tension of physical as well as psychological existence, which in her case runs through the painterly psychoanalysis.
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Simone Haack
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Beate Passow
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Fiona Rae
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nolde/kritik/documenta (German)
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Fabian Treiber
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America! America!
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In times of fake news and alternative facts it is becoming even more clear how the American Dream is closely interwoven with emotional pictures and symbols. At the same time, it can be said that no other nation might have the same strong awareness of the power of images. Images of the American Way of Life, which are produced in media and entertainment, are able to consolidate existing power structures and perceptions of reality, but also question them in a radical way. The psychologically charged canvasses of Eric Fischl, the hermetic scenes of Alex Katz, the enormous film-noir-like graffiti paintings of Robert Longo dissect the dreams and fears of an insecure white middle class. Simultaneously, artists such as Jeff Wall or Cindy Sherman conquer scenes that critically reflect our media-influenced perception, becoming models for subsequent generations. By showing 70 masterpieces of US-contemporary art, the book shows how artists from the 1960s to date comment on the American reality.
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Vera Mercer
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The American photographer Vera Mercer’s (b. Berlin, 1936; lives and works in Omaha and Paris) oeuvre defies easy summary. She started taking pictures in Paris in the 1960s, making portraits of her then husband Daniel Spoerri—who, like she, was initially training as a dancer—and other members of the Fluxus group and Nouveaux Réalistes, including Emmett Williams and Robert Filiou, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé. Around the same time, she also photographed Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp for various magazines; her friends Eva Aeppli and Niki de Saint Phalle were among her favorite sitters.
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Julia Steiner studied at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) from 2002 until 2007, with a semester abroad at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2005. In 2018–19, she held an interim professorship at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), leading the drawing class. Steiner’s work has won her several accolades, including the 2009 Swiss Art Award and the 2017 STRABAG Artaward International (Vienna).
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Hans Karl Zeisel
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Ohne Schlüssel und Schloss
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An jeder Haustür ziehen wir Grenzen, wir schließen auf und schließen ab. Und noch in jüngster Vergangenheit war eindeutig, was als Verschlusssache galt. Ganz anders stellt sich diese Frage im IT-Zeitalter. Ausgehend von der kunsthandwerklichen Sammlung des Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern wird deutlich, wie in früheren Jahrhunderten über mechanisch und symbolisch aufwendig gestaltete Schlösser, Schränke oder auch Reliquienbehältnisse Distanzen austariert wurden. Sie alle sind sichtbares Vehikel für die bewusste Wahrnehmung von innen und außen, zugehörig und ausgegrenzt, wissend und unwissend oder öffentlich und privat. Für Big Data gilt dies in keiner Weise mehr. Beim Digitalen werden Serviceleistungen mit Datenerhebungen verbunden, deren weiteren Einsatzbereiche wir weder unmittelbar verstehen noch überblicken können. Historische, technologische und philosophische Überlegungen bieten wichtige Beträge zur aktuellen Debatte und Einschätzung der Risiken und Chancen von Big Data.
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Clemens Krauss
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Spaces Embodied (ENGLISH)
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Artists: Absalon, Shannon Bool, Heidi Bucher, Eileen Gray, Do Ho Suh, Mary Mattingly, Tracey Snelling, Francesca Woodman
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João Onofre
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Nicola Staeglich – Farbe schwebend / Color floating
22€ Add to cart“The more slowly one approaches Staeglich’s works, the more they reveal.” Stephan Berg
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The catalogue accompanies Staeglich’s solo exhibition at Städtische Galerie Waldkraiburg.
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Michael Williams
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Michael Williams (b. 1978, Doylestown, Pa.; lives and works in Los Angeles) makes work that interrogates the history of painting, often by dismantling its components into their constituent parts. His pictures employ form to reflect on the complexity and contradictions of modern life. He works on canvas, availing himself of a range of techniques including oil painting, collage, and inkjet prints. In his new works, Williams examines the relationship between painting and photography, transferring the chilly aloofness that is characteristic of the latter onto the former. The photographic “negative” yields a smooth canvas disencumbered of its painterly qualities and the medium’s historic ballast. The book includes several foldout plates that illustrate Williams’s creative approach, and a brief essay by his Austrian fellow painter Tobias Pils.
Michael Williams studied fine arts at Washington University, St. Louis, and has exhibited widely, including at the Wiener Secession, Vienna, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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Barthélémy Toguo
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6 U L
Lust and Desire in Art and Design28€ Add to cart“Whose Jizz is this?” Sechs-u-ell: to make sense of the publication title, trust your college German and your phonetic ear. “Sexual,” here, comprises the entire broad spectrum of what we associate with carnal pleasure. Lust, desire, ecstasy, repression, obsession—the world of art, fashion, and design abounds with specimens of eroticism and sexuality in their infinite variety, shopworn stereotypes be damned. Looking back on the thorough revision of society’s ideas about sexuality in the past three decades, the book inquires into how the works of visual artists, fashion creatives, and designers reflect today’s public debates over biological and social gender roles, power structures, and sexual violence or the fading of taboos over sexual practices. With works and designs by Walter Van Beirendonck, Monica Bonvicini, Tracey Emin, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jürgen Klauke, Peaches, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Vivienne Westwood, and many more. This book documents a grand exhibition scheduled for the past summer at the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts, Leipzig, which had to be canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.