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Der Geheime Garten der Nachtigall

Claas Gutsche & Sebastian Nebe 12.03. - 02.05.2010 Open during Gallery Weekend Berlin: 30.04. - 02.05., 12-18 h. Closing reception: Sunday, 02. May, from 4p.m. “Blair Witch Project” or the fairy tale forest of the brothers Grimm – the forest remains an anarchic island amidst civilization. Place for the mysterious and foreboding. Simultaneously refuge from noise of urban routine and canvas for one’s mental state. In the first joint exhibition of the graduates Sebastian Nebe (*1982, HGB Leipzig) and Claas Gutsche (*1982, Royal College London) such a place develops far from established romantic perceptions at Galerie Wagner + Partner. The large-scale paintings in oil on paper by Sebastian Nebe show scraggy sections of forest and relics of civilization. In their dimensions the works convey a feeling of standing in the forest, though without orientation. Graphically exaggerated, the arrangements are unsettling. As already in his installation “Die Schwarze Hütte” (The Black Hut), exhibited in the gallery of the HGB Leipzig in 2009, Nebe designs a disquieting reality of the forest, a faintly illuminated twilight zone. Claas Gutsche also turns his eye to the border region between civilization and nature. His series “suburbia” are sombre linoleum and woodcuts that make the unsettling nature of this no man’s land palpable. Under the surface of idyllic places hide bygone and mysterious things. This metaphorical charge continues in his bronze objects. Barren branches here, lost or forgotten objects there, a bracelet, a bird’s nest – all these elements permeate and transform the gallery space. Embedded in a gesamtkunstwerk the works of both artists Claas Gutsche and Sebastian Nebe tell each their own mysterious stories and together turn the gallery into “The Nightingale’s Secret Garden”. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Ilka Halso

Restoration 15.01.- 06.03.2010 Weather has become “climate”, climate has turned into “climate crisis” – an unstoppable threat of our natural environment has been a global discussion topic for years. The internationally renowned Finnish artist Ilkka Halso (*1965 ) has been dealing with healing and rescue of endangered nature in his work for the best part of a decade. His photographic interventions are therefore not just the Finnish sequel of the “Landart”, developed in the USA in the 1960s, but also a reaction to our changing planet. The exhibition at Galerie Wagner + Partner aims to trace Halso’s aesthetic approach of rescuing nature. In the works of the series “Restoration” the artist develops and builds pseudo-scientific arrangements such as scaffolding trees with transparent gauze and illuminating them. Nature is given “treatment” as if in a field hospital, the damaged patient receives medical care. All photographs are made by night, when nature, so to speak is getting a good night’s sleep. The later series “Museum of Nature” shows a shift in this healing approach. Nature now is no longer being healed, it is being “rescued”. The viewer finds trees and whole landscapes in glass pavilions. Like a work of art, nature is stored and conserved in a museum. Has the patient become a mummy? This question must remain unanswered. While Ilkka Halso interferes directly with nature in his series restoration (photographic installation), he constructs his nature-protecting buildings by computer (digital construction) in the museum series. No real answer is given to whether this eases or increases the threat. Still, on an aesthetic level this approach of the artist remains appealing. _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Eckart Hahn

Intimate Play 06.11.2009 – 09.01.2010 Wagner + Partner Gallery is pleased to announce their first exhibition of painter, Eckart Hahn in Berlin, born 1971 in Freiberg. 'Intimate Play' (Kammerspiel) leads associatively through a series of images whose extraordinary colour and atmosphere are coolly calculated to touch viewers. Their realistic method of presentation oscillates between surrealistic and recent neo-figurative painting traditions. But what differentiates Hahn's work from the Surrealists or some of the representatives of the Leipzig School? Eckart Hahn constructs intimate play-like scenes in a dramatic way. He deals with the constraints of civilised life: with religion, family, social structures and the signs of their disintegration. However much one is excited by his image constructions, one remains perplexed. There are 'signs' (symbols, scenes, words) that are mediated through form and colour in an accessible way - but where do they lead? Codes and quotes, such as 'Nike' or graffiti, place the images in the present. They are about us. But has what Hahn presents in his images ever happened to one of us? Looking at Hahn's pictures conjures up in the viewer not so much a memory or a recognition but a high state of alarm. Instead of plausible stories we meet the suppressed that slumbers deep within, the conscious perception of which we have avoided until now. Eckart Hahn plumbs the space between dream and nightmare, the in-between place where we are when our normal daytime consciousness has yet not unfurled its controlling power. Hahn shows us the way into this in-between state through a pictorial language of form and content with which we are familiar. But, it is one that is not only unusual in the relationships between its components but has also developed over the years into his own visual language. The artist himself compares his images to a loose tooth; one plays with it, it hurts and still one continues, fascinated. A catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition: Eckart Hahn: "Grand Ouvert" , Kerber Verlag. ___________________________________________________________________________________________

Ina Geißler

Twister 11.09 – 31.10.2009 The force of tornadoes dissolves existing order, well known and familiar things are unexpectedly whirled around. The exhibition Twister shows large scale paintings and paper works of the Berlin artist Ina Geißler from her new series Dichtung. Depictions of grids and spheres are intertwined here: The grid as ornament is serial and thus infinitely repeatable. The sphere, as a closed shape, is hermetic and confining. From the connection of these contrary forms appear spaces that rotate and pull the viewer into their vortex. Fragments of urban architecture can be glimpsed in this swirl. Geißler dismantles existing architecture and reassembles it in construction kit style. In the process of painting, the photographic prototype emancipates itself. It ends up revealing itself only by association, becomes fragmented. The representational origin of the motifs dissolves into an abstract picture, where the order of up and down, inside and outside, near and far no longer exists. A new spatial arrangement appears, built up of many layers. Geißler applies one layer of paint upon another in egg tempera. Here the colours converge, there they separate sharply. The result is a futuristic architecture, that finds its counterweight in the brushed areas applied with matte and muted pastose colours. The connection of architectural space with sensuous painting is unfamiliar and dynamic. The eye enjoys following the swirls, in the end discovering a new horizon of experience. Ina Geißler (*1970) completed her studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin as master scholar under Prof. Marwan. After numerous international exhibitions and awards, “Twister” is the first presentation at Galerie Wagner + Partner. The exhibition occurs in cooperation with Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London. ________________________________________________________________________________________

One step beyond reality.

Eva Lauterlein, Josef Schulz, Natascha Stellmach, Raïssa Venables and Thomas Wrede 17.07. – 05.09.2009 Galerie Wagner + Partner proudly present this year’s summer exhibition with five international photographers that deal with the issue of truth content in photography. Raissa Venables (USA) and Joseph Schulz (Germany) question and scrutinize Architecture and space. While Venables queries the psychological and emotional character of spaces in a familiar way, Schulz manages to make architecture reappear in its fundamental features through digital reductions. Thomas Wrede (Germany) continues his series “Real Landscapes”, by staging models and real landscapes in such a way that the finished photographic “picture” leaves the observer unclear about which layer of reality is shown. Natascha Stellmach (Australia) also crosses layers of meaning in photographic depiction, combining text excerpts from her diaries with staged portraits of a girl; she suggests here a meaningful connection that never existed. Finally, Eva Lauterlein (Switzerland) questions “reality” of modern portrait photography, that is never “true” but always just “intentional”. Her faces are the skillful product of elaborate photo collage, more frightening than beautiful, but more “genuine” than any seemingly “real” portrait. Each artist skillfully calls on the observer to undergo a general overhaul of their view of reality, and “see” in a new way. In the combination of these different positions Galerie Wagner + Partner would like to make a contribution to the critical exploration of our own perceptual habits. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov

Sidewalk Installation, Painting 01.05. – 27.06. 2009 The exhibition ‘Sidewalk’ places the immediate surroundings into centre stage, the everyday stroll through the city. While being inevitably grounded, we are still moving through unknown territory. Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov explore the cityscape at kerbstone-level. They turn their eyes downwards, onto the horizontal border between the buildings and the footpath and thus discover uncharted territory. The border becomes permeable in the installation, which was designed for the rooms in the gallery at Karl-Marx-Allee, the street pavement continues inside the gallery and countless pigeons have settled in… The twins Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov (*1973) always work as artistic duo in the areas of painting and installation. In their works the world appears through the eyes of two very closely connected individuals. Doubled-up and repeated objects turn into traces of a complex relationship that reflect the internal and external world of two people. Where does the personal world begin, and where does it end? Where are the borders located between private and public, between trivial and profound? Can we still find our place? The Petschatnikovs connect to the artists Fischli and Weiss through a childlike joy of discovery and the humorous rendering of the surrounding environment. With fantasy, humour and depth they extract surprising new perspectives from the ordinary. Both succeed again and again in their paintings and installations in giving everyday objects and unspectacular interiors new meaning. Haphazard objects are analysed, painted, painstakingly reconstructed. Ordinary things become extraordinary arrangements hat reveal new layers of meaning. Trash turns to poetry. http://www.petschatnikov.de ___________________________________________________________________________________________

Thomas Wrede

Real Landscapes 13.03. - 25.04.2009 Forces of nature and human pioneering spirit collide in Thomas Wrede’s eerily beautiful landscape productions. The photographs are an intelligent tongue-in-cheek play with micro- and macro-perception, with naturalness and artificiality. One looks down from airy highs onto real, seductive landscapes, which the artist, using small models, turns into romantic places of yearning. Thomas Wrede has consistently developed his series „Real Landscapes“ since 2004 and attracted great interest with it internationally. The photographic picture composition is comparable in its drama with Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. The precision of details, the careful layout of the line suggesting a vastness of the landscape and not least the atmospheric colouring of the skies produce a brittle beauty. Faced by such forces of nature the viewer quickly loses their feeling of security. Instead of choreographed grandeur appear striking pictures of nearly unbearable borderline experiences.   Comparing Friedrich’s „Das Eismeer“ (The Sea of Ice) with Wrede’s work „Bergrutsch“ (Landslide), the parallels are astonishing. But instead of people Wrede chooses models of houses and vehicles as projection screens. These human traces appear strangely lost and fragile, or even displaced, like the lonely football field under floodlights. What are the builders looking for in this solitude? Or is the real question what on Earth are they doing there? The photographic works of Thomas Wrede show Utopia as well as loss. The archetypal landscapes also appear to be beyond space and time, they reflect our collective landscape image, as it has been established in traditional landscape painting and reproduced in countless media images. In Wrede’s picture-worlds we recognise these landscapes and feel safe. And more than that, it is as if the artist has found the essence for us: a landscape vision in which longing and fear peacefully coexist. http://www.thomas-wrede.de ________________________________________________________________________________________

Josef Schulz

übergang 23.01.- 07.03.2009 In present-day Europe internal borders are losing their political and economic dividing function. Since boom gates disappear more quickly than psychological barriers, the old borders remain in people’s consciousness. The long-term consequences of this geographic expansion of Europe into an externally functional unity, albeit culturally and ideologically in conflict, are still unforeseeable. Joseph Schulz has found convincing images for this complex historic change. In his series übergang [transition], begun in 2005, he focuses on the architecture of abandoned control posts of inner-European borders. Robbed of their function, the checkpoints appear like modern ruins; Schulz consciously shows no cars or people. The anonymous functional architecture presents itself surprisingly varied in this extensive series. The border posts stand out in sharp contrast in their misty surroundings, and this conjures up their imminent disappearance even more clearly. This fading effect is the result of digital editing which makes the background recede. The border territory becomes indistinct and interchangeable. The veiled context reduces the checkpoints to models - phase-out models. At the same time they appear as memorials for the past division and remind us of what is still unaccomplished. They mark the transition from past to future. In übergang Joseph Schulz presents a consistently conjugated block of works in the tradition of the Becher school, to which he feels connected as a Ruff-apprentice. Just as in his “Centre Commercial”, “Sachliches” [matter of fact Things] or “Formen” [Shapes] the artist applies digital means in addition to documentary arrangement in order to produce architectural clarity. The documentary core is intensified. The visible manipulations on the photographs do not diminish the exhibits’ reality content. On the contrary: the photographic transition, which Schulz embarks on, serves the discovery of truth. http://www.josefschulz.de The exhibition is held in cooperation with the Galerie Heinz-Martin Weigand, Ettlingen. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Raïssa Venables

Maybe too lofty? 05.12.2008 – 17.01.2009 Since the Renaissance we have become used to seeing spaces in painting in perspective. What slowly appears in Pre-Renaissance Italy with Giotto’s new spatial perception find its zenith with Brunelleschi with the invention of central perspective around 1420. The painted space is constructed mathematically towards a vanishing point. The pictorial alignment of all objects in it conforms to an illusionist rendition of reality. This is no different in the later appearing photography; the mathematical construction is replaced by the laws of the optic lens. The works of Raissa Venables break the photographic laws of optics as the artist procures a new freedom in the arrangement of the picture through digital processing and intervention. The works of Venables recall medieval thematic perspective. Spaces and objects are represented according to their spiritual significance, not their natural appearance. This is assisted by the artist’s expressive choice of colour. What appears formally like a regression in the dealing with spaces, is the order for Venables: while her early work were set primarily in private, intimate spaces, in her new exhibition the artist shows large and public places. Mundane and sacred spaces are the theme of “Maybe too lofty?”. Venables explores the unconscious experience we have in such spaces with acute sensibility and gives them an outlet. The artist traces the places and ends up in a new “thematic perspective”, which corresponds much more to a anthropological way of seeing. Her newest works have a formal and colourful elegance. They guide us through big train station cathedrals, into century-old churches and hidden temples. All places are “lofty”. One must only be able to see. With her new solo exhibition Raissa Venables gives us back a piece of the ability to see. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Helena Blomqvist

The last Golden Frog October 17 – November 29, 2008 Helena Blomqvists (Sweden,*1975) photo collages are complex woven fabrics of figures, artifacts, symbols and citations. An exciting mix of philosophical contemplation on the one hand and off-key humour on the other. Yet the photos reveal their special magic at the point where the arranged and digitally edited scenes suddenly appear to be like the surroundings in which the photographs are hung. The border between reality and fiction seems to melt. The viewer can change almost playfully between the layers of reality and imagination. Even Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren did not carry her readers off to new worlds more beautifully. Once upon a time… Like a scene from a fairy tale. A boy entwined with red flowers sits like a knight on a Lama. In front of him, as his companion, sits a fully dressed monkey, and together they look towards an adventure. Despite a fantastic and slightly odd impression one can subliminally sense an approaching catastrophe. Each photographic arrangement shows a drama in a particular situation. As if in a perpetual snapshot of life we see departure, sadness, companionship – and time and again darkness. As in her previous series, Helena Blomqvist captures the archetypes of our collective photographic memory. The reference to photographic practice of the 20th century is shown for example in the standardised group picture with soldiers, in the arrangement as well as the colouring. If the protagonists were not apes the pictures might have been taken out of a photo album of the First World War. Or are we actually dealing with a scene from Planet of the Apes? Blomqvist lays down many different visual tracks. In the end however the view again becomes free for the mechanisms of memory through photography. It used to be… Helena Blomqvist has already exhibited very successfully in Scandinavia; Gallery Wagner + Partner present her first solo exhibition in Germany in the context of the Third European Month of Photography in Berlin.   A catalogue is available from the gallery. _________________________________________________________________________________________

I just wanted you to love me

Peter Dreher, Natascha Stellmach & SPAM the musical 05.09. – 11.10.2008

Where would pop culture be without its immortal Dead? Is death itself already Pop? Recently the artist Natascha Stellmach acquired the ashes of former Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, who passed away in 1994. Ignited by this, her new installation encompasses photographic works and objects that investigate suicide, near death and the question of what remains after death. For one work, ‘set me free’ was written in the ashes and scanned. In another, Kurt Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus and the Brothers Grimm meet in a hallucinogenic twilight zone, the words of the story printed in tainted shades of grey, on black. And in an antique cigarette case engraved with ‘Gone.’, a joint made of ash and hash waits for its liberating ritual. For several years Peter Dreher has also been preoccupied with the subject of death, although ostensibly. The renowned artist of the series, ‘Tag um Tag, guter Tag’ (Day by day is a good day), who has painted the same drinking glass since 1974, here covers meters of paper in human skulls. These gouaches, through their bleeding surfaces, reveal the remarkable form of the skull. Only within the context of the distinct outline do the abstract areas of colour convey meaning. Through Dreher’s serial layering, death becomes more abstract and loses its terror. Don’t his skulls grin? In contrast, email spam seems immortal and celebrates its 30th birthday this year. In the cross-media project, ‘SPAM the musical’ videoartist Boris Eldagsen have made spam both his artistic subject and method. Spam emails were collected for two years to become scripts for video art. These 5-minute videos with titles such as ‘The Lonely Girls’ or ‘The Lottery’ are presented entertainingly and their promises visualised operatically. Still spam also has its dark side. In each video’s second part, ‘deleted scenes’, illusions about love and desire are rapidly broken. You find ‘SPAM the musical’ everywhere on the web, in your spam filter or http://www.spamthemusical.com .