Current and recent exhibitions:
"So Beautiful It Hurts'
Andrew McIntosh, Carolein Smit, Rebecca Stevenson
24.10.19 - 16.11.19 James Freeman Gallery, London
An exhibition exploring the boundary between beauty and horror.
Rebecca Stevenson, Fete Galante, 2019 photo: Marianne Wie
50 Years of the Kraft Collection
KUNST ist immer eine Behauptung. SAMMELN auch. 50 Jahre Sammlung Kraft
14.09.19 – 24.11.19 Kunstmuseum Villa Sanders, Cologne
Contemporary, modern, outsider and non-western art from the collection of Hartmut & Maria Kraft.
Rebecca Stevenson, 'Sweet Shell', 2004, wax, Kraft Collection. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
B.A.R.O.C.K.
Artist Interventions at Schloss Caputh & the Wunderkammer Olbricht
Margret Eicher, Luzia Simons, Rebecca Stevenson, Myriam Thyes
Curated by Margret Eicher and Mark Gisbourne
5 .5.19 - 31.10.19 at Schloss Caputh, Potsdam and ME Collectors Room, Berlin
An exhibition of contemporary works in the 17th century interiors of Schloss Caputh, the baroque pleasure palace of the Electress Dorothea, on the banks of the picturesque River Havel. Plus: a parallel exhibition in the world-renowned wunderkammer of the Olbricht Foundation in Berlin Mitte.
'Dreamers' (detali), Rebecca Stevenson, with historic busts in the porcelain room at Schloss Caputh. Photo: Daniel Lindner
Curated by Margret Eicher and Mark Gisbourne, this exhibition explores parallels between the Baroque era and our contemporary world. It features works by four leading women artists in a variety of media including digital tapestry, photographic print, digital projection and sculpture.
'Baroque' is understood as a mind-set, a cultural symptomatology describing our present psycho-political condition. As in the historical age of the Baroque, we experience complex social, religious and political upheavals, which interconnect with each other to create a global anxiety or ‘apocalyptic feeling’.
The art of the Baroque period embodies both this apocalyptic sensation and the pleasures of being alive in a manner which still compels us. It conveys emotion without embarrassment or restraint; it transcends the normative; in terms of both content and aesthetics, it plays subtly with the boundary of what is and what is not representable.
In a contemporary context, the reinvention of Baroque is concerned with creating new metaphors for power and threat, pleasure and horror. Real and virtual war, turmoil in the financial markets, acts of terror, the fall of civilisation – scenarios already played out in action movies and computer games – generate new images of ‘memento mori’.
In this exhibition, four international artists enact a return to ideas and images of Vanitas, beauty in transience, via interventions and installations in the palace interior. The relation between death and sensuality in their work is embodied in the typically baroque idea of ‘decay in the state of flowering’. Using and modifying both contemporary and historical metaphors and symbols, their works articulate the simultaneous presence of beauty and loss, the instability of our material world, and the inevitability of the fall. The works shown in the interior of the palace testify to the splendour and misery of our post-human era.
A catalogue with essays by Mark Gisbourne, Dr. Samuel Wittwer and Julia Rust is available