Klosterwall  23,  20095  Hamburg  —  Telefon:  +49  (0)40  32  21  57  —  Telefax:  +49  (0)40  32  21  59  —  www.kunstverein.de  —  hamburg@kunstverein.de  

Norbert Schwontkowski Blind Man’s Faith January 26 – April 14, 2013

Norbert Schwontkowski, Baku, 2006 In his drawings and paintings, Norbert Schwontkowski (*1949, lives in Bremen and Berlin) does not seek to produce abstract works, but instead allows objects and figures to emerge from his textured compositions. No matter how small his canvas, he proves himself to be a wonderful narrator. His work depicts human weaknesses and conceit, as well as inadequacy and existential paralysis, but also shows glimpses of movement and happiness. In his work, the artist reveals the permeability of the borders between fantasy and reality and between the past and the present. Space and time play an important role, too, as memories and perceptions mingle in his work. Viewers are prompted to activate their own experiences and recollections. Indeed, the artist wants his pictures to trigger an “internal cinema”. Viewers can only encounter the blurring and ambiguity with which Schwontkowski composes his pictures by referring to their own lives. The artist works in oils and pigments, but often adds metallic oxides, which can cause the colours to change in unexpected ways. Using a wet-in-wet technique, he first applies many layers of paint on top of each other, thus creating a type of horizontal sub-structure. His use of metallic oxides is similar to methods used in photography and film in terms of their sensitivity to light. Part of the painting process is left to the uncontrollable forces of chemistry, whose capricious and surprising effects Schwontkowski uses to deliberate effect. This may result in pastose, fluid, or – frequently – shimmering areas and patches of paint that simultaneously convey lightness and weight. Schwontkowski creates oppressive or ironic accounts of human existence. The quality of these accounts is primarily the result of the impressions and sensations that they give rise to in the viewers. The Kunstverein Hamburg will present new works by the artist as part of its topic-based programme for 2013.

A World of Wild Doubt Anarchiks, Martin Assig, Thomas Bechinger, Tim Boxell, G. K. Chesterton, Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Jeremy Deller, Friedrich Einhoff, Will Elder, James Ensor, Tessa Farmer, Andreas Fischer, Jim Franklin, Gilbert & George, Rodney Graham, Bill Griffith, Rainer Hachfeld, Rand Holmes, Heino Jaeger, Horst Janssen, Mike Kelley, Hubert Kiecol, Jay Kinney, Denis Kitchen, Joachim Koester, Christof Kohlhöfer, David Lloyd, Mark Lombardi, Bobby London, Paul Mavrides, Cildo Meireles, Olaf Metzel, Norman Mingo, Wilhelm Mundt, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Sigmar Polke, Antonio Prohías, Matthias Recht, Marten Schech, Gregor Schneider, Max Schulze, Andreas Slominski, Rolf Stieger, Suzanne Treister, Félix Vallotton, Lawrence Weiner, Stephen Willats, Louis Zansky January 26 – April 14, 2013

Tessa Farmer, Butterfly, 2011 The starting point of this exhibition is the novel The Man Who Was Thursday by British poet G. K. Chesterton from 1908. This mysterious crime story about a seven-headed anarchist council, which actually consists of spies from the London secret police, addresses a world in a permanent state of emergency. The text weaves an unsettling web out of surveillance and anxieties, takes unexpected metaphysical turns and ends in utter chaos. Nothing less than the question of what constitutes genuine anarchy is negotiated. However, “A World of Wild Doubt” is not so much an exhibition about The Man Who Was Thursday as it is a curatorial experiment with the novel. We are not interested in a scholarly interpretation; instead, visitors embark on a journey full of associations, historical and contemporary references, ambiguous moods as well as grotesque situations. “A World of Wild Doubt” fuses the scepticism of classical modernity towards absolute freedom with contemporary attitudes. Additionally, the show formulates a criticism of the dominance of neoliberal and plutocratic models of society. Some works are made especially for “A World of Wild Doubt”; other positions confirm the worst forebodings or formulate alternatives. Additionally, the so-called Wonderwall assembles diverse materials such as early anarchist pamphlets, punk records, books, comics, printed graphic works, and ephemera. In September 2011 the Kunstverein Hamburg hosted a charity auction for the benefit of the institution. In addition to many works by artists who had exhibited at this venue in the past, a carte blanche for an exhibition was also raffled. This lot was aquired by Michael Liebelt, who, together with Dorothee Böhm, Petra Lange-Berndt and Dietmar Rübel, is curating “A World of Wild Doubt” in the ground floor space of the Kunstverein.

John Bock May 1 – June 30, 2013

John Bock, No Time No Screws, 2009, Installation/Performance John Bock (*1965) is a German artist living in Berlin. His work, a vibrant mix of installation, sculpture, performance, theatre and film, transcends all artistic boundaries. In vast installations, he combines the most diverse materials (wood, cardboard, food, cotton wool, cleaning agents, shaving foam…) and different modes of artistic expression to create a complex scene in which he himself often plays the lead role and reveals his world to us through confusing, surreal experiments. Simply by existing side by side, the materials that inhabit Bock’s spaces generate potential meaning that drifts over the rhizomatic structure of the works. These installations, which provide the backdrop to his absurd performances, are charged with all manner of references. They break down the barriers between the public and the art in a way that always keeps the “I”, the unconscious, and the subjective in the foreground. His approach produces connections and contradictions that are surprising and poetic, and that play on form as well as content. In doing so, Bock refers to everything from pop culture, music, fashion and film to parapsychology, science and everyday life. For the Kunstverein Hamburg, Bock has developed a large-scale installation – a “scent station” that will remain largely invisible to visitors.

Nader Ahriman May 1 – June 30, 2013

Nader Ahriman, Stromboli, 2006 Nader Ahriman’s (*1964, lives in Berlin) pictures are the product of extensive notes and sketches. But it is only when he starts to paint that the final outcome begins to emerge. His work reflects the representational nature and intensity of the theatre. He begins every painting with a philosophical idea in mind, which provides one way of reading his approach to symbolisation. But beyond that his work reveals numerous levels of history, fiction, naturalism, surrealism and symbolism, all of which allow us to read him in many different ways. Ahriman’s pictures often feature pairings – people with machines, people with nature, intellect with emotions – that depict relationships as a balance of power. He uses them to develop an intensely personal vocabulary of motifs and forms that are the building blocks of his surreal, fantastical worlds. Ahriman’s art explores the ethical hopes of modern Western thinking and simultaneously interprets and references social processes. The paintings lend literal and figurative form to the abstract philosophical concepts of 19th century Western idealism and to the schools that emerged in the 20th century as a reaction to that movement. It is this combination of figurative representation and abstract thought – the attempt to paint philosophy – that makes Ahriman’s work so fascinating. To paraphrase the philosopher Slavoj Žižek: Ahriman brings into reality concepts – illuminism, idealism to name but two – that belong so clearly to the past that the only possible way to explain them is by referring to historical circumstances, conditions and reactions. But captured in Ahriman’s pictures, these philosophical schools become structuring principles that develop their own unique momentum – whether as universal ideas or as concepts that function on a mythological level. Rather than dismissing them as obsolete notions, Ahriman focuses on the dialectical relationship that exists between a universal idea and its historical reality, and on how this chasm between the present and the past can trigger change in each of them. Part of the exhibition will feature work from Ahriman’s ongoing three-part series Stromboli. The 17 paintings and 27 drawings depict figures of self-awareness and their experiences on the island of Stromboli. There will also be seven other drawings, which show the figures’ philosophical and anatomical structure. In Stromboli and in more recent works, Ahriman explores the possibility of depicting philosophical issues and historic processes. In doing so, he places metaphysical questions and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in the context of the history of painting.

Nathan Hylden July 13 – September 15, 2013

Nathan Hylden, Untitled, 2008 In his works, Nathan Hylden (*1978, lives in Los Angeles) takes a conceptual approach to the conditions and effects of painting. While the medium of painting is generally associated with the idea of uniqueness, Hylden’s work is defined by seriality and based on automated repetition and the efficiency inherent to his chosen materials: standard unmixed metallic paints, fluorescent spray paints, templates and untreated canvases. The individual pieces are an integral part of a series or a complete set of works, created over a long period of time. Each one is an autonomous work and at the same time part of an ongoing process. He thus produces pictures that are undoubtedly intended as paintings, but which also suggest that this status may ultimately be the only thing their content aspires to.

Natalie Czech July 13 – September 1, 2013

Natalie Czech, A Hidden Poem by Jack Kerouac #2, 2011 What poetic potential lies hidden in newspapers and books? How can images be turned into words and words into images? Questions like these on the relationship and interactions between image and text have inspired Natalie Czech’s (*1976, lives in Berlin) recent photographic works. For the “Hidden Poems” group of works she started in 2010, Czech takes illustrated pages from newspapers and illustrated books, and highlights individual words in the passages of text to reveal a previously hidden poem. The original text is still visible but marked to show a second text − a poem by a writer or poet, such as Robert Creeley, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann or Robert Lax. The poem interacts with the original text, commenting and expanding on the existing context and meaning. For example, there is the spectacular sunset, whose supernatural colours − we learn in the accompanying text − are the result of a nuclear test. Czech also makes her markings on pages in books about appropriation art, which deal with the theme of authorship so relevant to her own work. In other groups of works, she reverses the subjective process of reading and finding to concentrate on the realm of possibilities within writing. For her work “A Small Bouquet by Frank O’Hara”, Czech commissioned various authors to write texts and then embedded visual poems in them. Her combinations of image and text open up a web of possible meanings and perspectives, and explore what lies beyond the confines of singular meanings and linearity. Czech’s text-image combinations aim, not least, to seek out the poetic sensations in the everyday and thus draw attention to the poetry inherent to our daily lives.

Olaf Metzel September 28 – December 31, 2013

Olaf Metzel, Sprachgitter, 2009 When it comes to the question of how art relates to life, the sculptures and installations literally plucked from life, and the interventions into life itself by Olaf Metzel (*1952, lives in Munich), occupy a special place in European art and beyond. Using metal scaffolding, safety barriers, wrecked sports hall equipment, rows of spectator stand seats, snack-bar tables, metal lockers and other sometimes brutally manipulated objects and materials, Metzel seems to take a literal approach to the avant-garde insistence that art must impact directly on everyday life. However, Metzel is not interested in exploring a new “material aesthetics” and still less in teasing out the “poetry of the trivial” that resides in all things. Instead, the Munich-based sculptor, object artist and draughtsman aims to engage directly with the viewer and his or her social, urban and socio-political environment. His interventions are iconographic and at the same time politically controversial in their critical interpretation of contemporary history. His sculptures present aesthetic situations that are frighteningly close to the Real, in the sense of Jacques Lacan. His installations address things that lie beyond the realm of language, the inexpressible, the traumas of Germany’s history that have not yet been assimilated in symbolic terms.

Martin Arnold September 28 – December 31, 2013

Martin Arnold, Deanimated, 2002, still Martin Arnold (*1959, lives in Vienna) can be described as a “body snatcher”. He uses the bodies of unsuspecting movie stars for his technological and ideological purposes. In his works, he retouches and reformulates historical film material. Using loops, rhythm disturbances, repetitions and slow motion, he reveals the latent aggression, compulsions and primitive desires of the characters in the films. The artist himself talks about making “inscribings” and of films of symptoms. The film images themselves are extremely important to his work. They not only show particular places, actors and storylines, but dreams, hopes and the taboos of the time and society in question. If he had the time, Arnold says he would gladly rework all famous feature films and free them of their main protagonists and other distracting elements, as he did in Deanimated (2002). Imagine sets devoid of people: Ingrid Bergman kissing the air instead of Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne’s horse galloping alone across the prairie. Arnold’s current work shows cartoon characters from the 1940s in all their glory and in unimagined grandeur. He exaggerates, analyses and retouches, working with blackouts, flickering effects, white flashes, flapping ears and clenched fists or turns smiles into grimaces by playing them backwards.