Kategorie: General

New York Scholarship holder of the State of Lower Saxony and the Lower Saxony Sparkassenstiftung Lisa Seebach, exhibition view DEAR FEAR (2015), Künstlerhaus MeinersenLisa Seebach, exhibition view DEAR FEAR (2015), Künstlerhaus Meinersen

Lisa Seebach (born 1981 in Cologne, lives in Braunschweig) studied free art from 2007 to 2013 with the professors Corinna Schnitt and Candice Breitz as well as with Prof. Raimund Kummer, with whom she graduated. In 2014 she completed her master studies with Prof. Thomas Rentmeister. The artist has already received numerous prizes and scholarships, including this year’s Friedrich Voremberge Scholarship from the City of Cologne and the Förderpreis Bildende Kunst des Landes Brandenburg.

Lisa Seebach works in the media of sculpture and installation. In her sculptural works, she translates the factual into fragile constructions of line, mass and weight. In the field of tension between steel lines describing spaces and earthy ceramic elements, the sculptures tell of places and moments, of encounters and situations. While in some works the physicality of man becomes painfully perceptible through his absence in Lisa Seebach’s material world, other sculptures bear witness to figures in different forms of existence. Through the masterly spatial arrangement of her abstract protagonists, the sculptor develops a great narrative of unstable conditions.

The exhibition with works by Lisa Seebach is being created in cooperation with the Kunstverein Braunschweig and presents works created during the artist’s twelve-month stay in New York, as a joint award from the Ministry of Science and Culture and the Lower Saxony Sparkassenstiftung has made this possible for her.

 

Erika Hock was born in 1981 in Dshangi – Dsher, Kyrgyzstan, grew up in Lingen (Ems) and now lives in Cologne. She studied at the art academies in Münster and Düsseldorf and presented her artistic work in solo exhibitions at the Salzburger Kunstverein and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg and participated in group exhibitions at the Kunstverein in Braunschweig and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, among others. In her sculptural works, she combines elements of Modernism (Art Deco) with elements of Postmodernism (Sottsass), pointing out a way in which the achievements of both epochs can be analysed and made fruitful for the present. On a narrative level, she combines the intimacy of private furniture with the illuminated public of an exhibition. Here too, the contradiction creates both humour and rhetorical exaggeration. Erika Hock likes to set spots – or here: the glaring lamp light – and stage the objects like movie stars. She thinks with the trained eye of a cinemagoer or director.

For her exhibition in the Kunsthalle Lingen, Erika Hock will relate existing sculptures to new works.

Kunsthalle Lingen would like to thank the State of Lower Saxony, the district of Emsland, the city of Lingen (Ems) and the Heinrich Kampmann Cultural Foundation for their generous support.

 

LINGEN ART PRIZE 2018 – GEORGIA GARDNER GRAY
This year the established and renowned Lingen Art Prize will be awarded for the 23rd time. Since 1983 it has been dedicated exclusively to artists who work in the medium of painting. Previous prizewinners include Karin Kneffel (1994), Antje Majewski (1998), Cornelius Völker (2004), Birgit Megerle (2010) and Marieta Chirulescu (2014), and Éder Oliveira received it in 2016.

This year, a total of twelve directors and curators from museums in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium were each asked for two proposals. The level of applications submitted was surprisingly high. The jury – consisting of the members of the Friends of the Lingen Art Prize Sigrid Hohoff, Marita Kamp and Richard Lange, as well as Eva Birkenstock (Director, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf), Kristina Szepanski (Director, Kunstverein Münster) and Meike Behm (Director, Kunsthalle Lingen) and as guest Monika Schwegmann, City Treasurer Lingen – came to the conclusion that the prize should be awarded to the American artist Georgia Gardner Gray this year.

Georgia Gardner Gray was born in New York in 1988 and now lives in Berlin. She graduated from the Cooper Union School for the Advancement in Science and Art in 2011. Her works were shown for the first time in 2016 in a solo exhibition at the ACUD Gallery, Berlin. She has participated in group exhibitions such as Monday is a Day between Sunday and Tuesday, Tanya Leighton Galerie, Berlin (2017) and New Theater: Selected Plays, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015). In 2018 she was presented at Art Basel Statement with Gallery Croy Nielsen Vienna.

Georgia Gardner Gray works mainly in the medium of painting, but always presents her paintings in correspondence with objects. In her colourful works, Georgia Gardner Gray reflects codes of behaviour based on the characters on the canvas and questions social conventions. Her works are in the tradition of classical genre painting because she paints everyday scenes and confronts them with contemporary lifestyles of different characters such as punks, groupies or street musicians. In her works, Georgia Gardner Gray also negotiates hierarchies between the sexes, male and female vices and actually fixed role assignments. The artist conveys the unconventional attitude of the Bohemians as exemplary for the current development of a society that prefers experimental forms of life and operates with the ambivalence between self-determination, attitude and freedom.

With the award of the Lingen Art Prize 2018 to Georgia Gardner Gray, another non-European artist will be honoured in the history of this prize.

The exhibition of Georgia Gardner Gray and its accompanying catalogue are presented by the

Friends of the Lingen Art Prize.

Previous prizewinners:

1983: Reinhard Wieczorek, Bottrop; 1984: Henning Rethmeier, Panker; 1985: Annette Venebrügge, Hamburg; 1986: Dagmar Demming, Berlin; 1987: Thomas Jessen, Düsseldorf;

1988: Beate Spalthoff, Berlin; 1989: Ildefons Höyng, Jüchen; 1990: Jochen Twelker, Berlin;

1991: Barbara Steppe, Berlin; 1992: Rolf Bier, Hanover; 1994: Karin Kneffel, Düsseldorf;

1996: Andrea Scrima, Berlin; 1998: Antje Majewski, Berlin; 2000: Matthias Kanter, Leipzig;

2002: Amalia Theodorakopoulos, Frankfurt; 2004: Cornelius Völker, Düsseldorf, 2006: Annelise Coste, Zurich, 2008: Julia Oschatz, Berlin, 2010: Birgit Megerle, Berlin, 2012: Kim Nekarda, Berlin, 2014: Marieta Chirulescu, Berlin; 2016: Èder Oliveira, Belem, Brazil

Image: Croy_Nielsen-Georgia_Gardner_Gray_TheParisRERRegionalTrain_2017 / Press picture Kunsthalle Lingen

 

THE APPLE. AN INTRODUCTION. (AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN) ANTJE MAJEWSKI AND PAWEŁ FREISLER WITH AGNIESZKA POLSKA, JIMMIE DURHAM AND PIOTR ŻYCIEŃSKI
This exhibition on the subject of apples, initiated by the artists Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler, is an artistic as well as a scientific-cultural-historical project, which, through a planting campaign involving urban groups, experiences an expansion into urban space.

The Kunsthalle Lingen features paintings of old and new apple varieties in the tradition of Natura Morte, an Eve with an apple and video works by Antje Majewski; dried and carved apples by Paweł Freisler, which appear both as objects, in the form of photographs by Piotr Życieński and as illustrations in plastic using a 3D printer; Agnieszka Polska’s video work „Garden“, which leads us to the garden of the legendary artist, in which among other things a perfect egg can be found; and Jimmie Durham’s apple juice bottles, which he produced for dOCUMENTA (13), which also planted two apple trees.

Since an apple variety can only remain sorted when people graft it onto a new rootstock, ie cloned, preserving the incredible variety of colours, shapes and tastes of possible apple varieties is a cultural achievement.

A very important part of the exhibition, therefore, does not take place in the gallery itself, but as an artistic-ecological project in urban space. In March 2018, up to 50 trees of old apple varieties are to be planted in public places in the city of Lingen. Your apples will be available to all citizens of Lingen.

Kunsthalle Lingen thanks the state of Lower Saxony, the district of Emsland, the city of Lingen (Ems) and the Cultural Foundation Heinrich Kampmann for their generous support.

The exhibition is generously supported by the Stiftung Niedersachsen.

Every two years, a group exhibition takes place in the Kunsthalle Lingen, within which the art-creating members of the Kunstverein offer an insight into their artistic work. Each member is allowed to participate and may submit three works, which will then be installed by the Kunsthalle team. In terms of the submitted medium, there is no limitation: painting, sculpture, object, installation, photography and performance is presented.

Kunsthalle Lingen thanks the State of Lower Saxony, the District of Emsland, the City of Lingen (Ems) and the Cultural Foundation Heinrich Kampmann for their generous support.

The Canadian artist Vida Simon lives and works in Montreal. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and Cooper Union (NY) at the beginning of the 1990s and presented her artistic work at performance festivals such as TraficArt in Saguenay, Quebec, and the 9th International Performance Festival in Giswil, Switzerland. Vida Simons artistic work combines drawing, found and hand – made objects, sound and movement in the form of location – specific and – related installations and performances.
A continuous aspect of her work is drawing: a medium that expresses their interests most directly in visual narrative, improvisation and elementary materials. In their performances, drawing plays an important role on the ground. Based on handmade miniatures or fragments from nature, her work often draws attention to the detail, the intimate, the ephemeral. In their performances the reflection of history plays an important role, including that of Jewish history.

Vida Simon will develop a new installation and performance for the first floor of the Kunsthalle, which will be presented at the opening of the exhibition.

The Kunsthalle Lingen would like to thank the Emsland Sparkassenstiftung, the state of Lower Saxony, the Emsland district, the town of Lingen (Ems) and the cultural foundation Heinrich Kampmann for its generous support.

Flaka Haliti (born 1982 in Prishtina, Kosovo, lives in Munich) represented her home country Kosovo at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She was a scholarship holder of the Villa Romana in Florence until the beginning of this year and is the recipient of the Ars Viva Prize. She completed her studies at the College of Fine Arts, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and presented her artistic work in individual exhibitions at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, at the MIZA Gallery in Tirana and the Gallery LambdaLambdaLambda in Prishtina. Flaka Haliti participated in group exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Salzburg Kunstverein, the Kunsthalle Wien and the World Cultural Museum in Frankfurt am Main.

Flaka Haliti works in the fields of object, installation and photography. In terms of content, her artistic work is concerned with a geopolitical analysis of national boundaries and the identity of associations such as the United Nations or the European Union. In 2014 numerous cloud photographs were created, which contained imaginary, drawn-in faces. In correspondence with these cloudy faces, the artist presented large concrete barriers. Concrete is not an arbitrarily chosen material, but the primary way in which people claim space from nature (from the sidewalk to the dam). It is also a convenient and easy way to create restrictions, security and borders.

In addition to photographs and concrete sculptures, a further part of the exhibition in Lingen will be a 7-meter-long curtain, in shades reminiscent of a sunset. The title of the work „Just Hanging Around“ conveys a lot of poetry and humor. The curtain attracts attention, allowing eyes to wander up to the ceiling. A visual obstacle and a sensual shift of fabric and color. In contrast to concrete or stone walls, the soft folds offer consolation and allow a remote and inaccessible horizon to be associated. The strongest obstacles are the soft ones. The presentation in Lingen is supplemented by new works, created in Florence as well as for the Kunsthalle Lingen.

The Kunsthalle Lingen thanks the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, Sparkasse Emsland, the state of Lower Saxony, Emsland, the city of Lingen (Ems) and the cultural foundation Heinrich Kampmann for their generous support.

The Cuban artist, Diango Hernández (born in 1970 in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba), studied industrial design in Havana in the 1990s and became one of the founders of a collective of Cuban artists and designers named „Ordo Amoris Cabinet“.

Diango Hernández presented his work both in individual exhibitions in the Kunsthalle Münster and in the Kunstverein Nürnberg and recently in the Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen. He attended group exhibitions in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Diango Hernández reveals individual moments of his biography in his paintings, objects and wall paintings. The longing for the lost home, the beach, the fruits and the language characterizes his aesthetic vocabulary. The meandering speeches of Fidel Castros transforms Diango Hernández into new visual expressions: in a wall painting, words become waves and waves to a sea of ​​blue signs. Home as an ideological construction and home as a place of longing, the two memory axes, energy storage and the perpetual motion of the artistic production of Diango Hernández. The exhibition presents a comprehensive insight into his work with works from the past three years.

 

The Kunsthalle Lingen would like to thank the Stiftung Niedersachen, the state of Lower Saxony, Emsland, Stadt Lingen (Ems) and Kulturstiftung Heinrich Kampmann for its generous support.