May 2010, Kunstraum Richard Sorge presents the "Vorwärts!" exhibition on Socialism, viewing it from angles of idealism, ideology, sexuality and aesthetics.
Participants stem from "socialist monarchy" the Netherlands, the USA, both historical sides of Germany, former involuntarily communist country Estonia, and exiles from Peru and China.
Feat. Gert-Jan Akerboom, Peeter Allik, Art-Erhaltung, Shepard Fairey, Musk Ming, Jürgen Wittdorf, Heimatlose Volkskunst, a.o.
Gert-Jan Akerboom - DE (drawing) pdf
The nationalist and totalitarian sites and symbols of commemoration are some of the more sinister objects and themes that inspire Dutch artist in Berlin Gert-Jan Akerboom's intuitive ink drawings. The artist is interested in the stylized way destruction is presented in popular media, like comics and computer graphics/games, researching the "transaesthetization" of violence, heroism, history and remembrance.
The exhibition will present a series of Akerboom's flag drawings in which he uses his detailed drawing technique to research the morbidity of national symbols like flags, home soil, monuments and fortifications, suggestive of the current discussions of national identity.
Peeter Allik - EST (linocut/lithoprint) pdf
The masterful linocuts and paintings of Estonian artist Peeter Allik explore Europe's
traditional values, murderous ideologies and not quite so innocent folklore.
The work is traditional in appearance, refreshingly sarcastic in tone.
Allik explores both communist and capitalist materialism, its collective loneliness of
individualism that is reminiscent of Houellebecq's novels.
Art-Erhaltung - sine locus (installation)
Art-Erhaltung is neither an artistic collaboration nor an art collective, but rather an agglomerate of creative minds keenly interested in presenting artworks with a conceptual outlook. They encourage a polemical and philosophical discourse that questions the art world's unwritten conventions.
Their "Nous-Art Ensembles" work group "Barbarus Hic Ego Sum - Here I Am The Barbarian" from 2002-2004 offers a humorous commentary on a society that has lost its sense of social values. It is important to Art-Erhaltung that under no circumstances shall their conceptual art serve socially unengaged elitism. Their philanthropic contractual agreements between patron and artist are a crucial part of each art work.
Heimatlose Volkskunst (installation)
The exiled South-American artist who has been working in Berlin for almost two decades under the label "Heimatlose Volkskunst," (homeless folk art) uses the civilizational waste (often of GDR origin) found in the city's streets and abandoned buildings as material for his art. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the artist collected the cultural history of the GDR, as it was quite literally thrown out of the window, and uses it in his art, fusing it with the relics and symbols of other totalitarian ideologies and religions.
The artist has experienced both right wing and left wing dictatorships, having studied in Santiago de Chile and Havana, absorbing theater, art, religion, philosophy, and the literature and myths of South America. He views his art as "a melting point between the spiritual and material, articulating something spiritual in a material way".
Intuitive, obsessive and spot-on, the oeuvre uses a collagist concept of working that encompasses sculpture, painting, mural, works on paper, combining all these techniques in ever-expanding large scale installations that owe as much to Shamanism, Santeria and Catholicism as they do to Mad Max and Texas Chain Massacre.
Shepard Fairey - USA (silkscreen/prints)
Shepard Fairey manages a unique balance of the political, counter-cultural and commercial, freely bending and deconstructing the aesthetics of propaganda and liberation in a ultimately very personal and morally sound way that irks both conservatives and PC liberals (always a good sign of innovation). The artist uses the graphic language of the subjects he may critique or celebrate, employing highly educated travesties of style, while investing them with subversive and irritating layers of meaning.
Misinterpreted surprisingly often, Fairey's works are, in the artist's words, "designed to start a dialogue about imagery absorption"; the emotional use and mis-use of images. The oeuvre as a whole amounts to a stunning visual research into the history of ideology, either exposing its cynicism, or re-evaluating the validity of ideals along the way.
Fairey's work questions cultural ownership by boldly claiming the right to interact with many different cultural heritages, aligning itself with the progressive elements in all.
Musk Ming - DE (drawing)
Berlin-based Chinese artist Musk Ming skillfully uses historical styles taken from Maoist propaganda and vintage Chinese popular culture and, subversively twisting their inherent heteronormativity, invests them with his own exploration of the rich but currently suppressed queer Chinese culture and history.
The artist criticizes the lack of personal freedom and cultural and artistic expression granted to the Chinese LGTBQ community, which he -quite patriotically- traces back to colonial influences, and suggests a return to Taoist values as a tolerant alternative. Tackling (post)communist dogma with its own aesthetics, he masterfully appropriates the saccharine Maoist calendar illustration style to explore the rich gay history of China. It is important to Musk Ming to show that sexual liberalism and tolerance are a historical part of Chinese culture, not a 'new capitalist idea' imported from from the West.
Ming's painting of athletes, Go West, was chosen to take part in the official Chinese Olympic Art Exhibition, but the work's participation was revoked by the Ministry of Culture shortly before the show's opening.
Jürgen Wittdorf DE (woodblock printing)
Within the confines of the early 1960s government-controlled art scene of the GDR, Jürgen Wittdorf was miraculously able to publicly develop a historically unique group of homoerotic socialist woodblock prints and linocuts.
Widely publicized and exhibited at the time, the Zyklus Für die Jugend (1960/61) works were criticized and demonized as "westernized" by the authorities, because Wittdorf sympathetically portrayed rebellious youth, in the shape of jeans-clad street kids and rockers (as later he would portray punks) instead of idealized young socialist party members. Widespread public acclaim especially from young audiences was however able to silence the criticism.
In Jugend und Sport (1964) Wittdorf seems at first to placate his ideological critics by putting his models in more familiar socialist poses, but subverts the heroics by a surprisingly blatant (and in retrospect very witty) homoeroticism, proving either the naivety or open-mindedness of the state patrons and audiences of the time.
May 1-27, 2010, We-Fr: 1-6 pm, Sa: 3-7 pm, So: 2-6 pm.
Closing reception: Friday, May 28, 7 pm.
Vorwaerts exhibition essay: german, english
Vorwaerts press release: german, english
The first days of the show coincide with the Landsberger 54 Galerierundgang: The art spaces and galleries in the Old Brewery will jointly open their doors, presenting an ambitious range of exhibition receptions and events lasting through the May 1 & 2 Berlin Gallery Weekend.
Galerierundgang press release: german, english
Thanks to Art-Report, Artou.
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