Enrique Marty: Soft Cockney
Tatjana Gerhard: Die neuen Sterblichen
May 26–July 7, 2013
Deweer Gallery
Tiegemstraat 6A
8553 Otegem
Belgium
Room II
Enrique Marty: Soft Cockney
Enrique Marty’s vast oeuvre includes paintings, videos, watercolours and sculptures, and presents itself as a veritable exploration of the hidden side of the human soul through an obsessive registration of its behaviour in all its possible expressions. Marty (b. 1969, Salamanca, Spain; works in Salamanca) draws on the characteristics of amateur visual language and mass communication, and focuses on phenomena such as the unlimited recording and reproduction of personal experiences and popular narrative techniques. The artist does not interpret but entirely, and solely, focuses on recording, at a speed and intensity that is not coincidentally reminiscent of Goya. Marty’s oeuvre is an encyclopedia of so-called normal human life, a comédie humaine with dark overtones.
Shortly after his participations at the Biennales of Venice in 2001 and 2005 and at one of the last great exhibitions by the late Harald Szeemann in MoMA PS1, New York (2003–2004), the artist was introduced by Deweer Gallery to the Belgian audience. Soft Cockney is his fourth one-man show at Deweer Gallery after the spectacular solo shows of 2006, 2008 and 2010. The exhibition brings together some 15 life-size sculptural portraits of tattooed persons.
Enrique Marty has had further solo shows at, a.o., the Reina Sofia Museum/Espacio Uno in Madrid (2001), Musac (Léon, ES, 2007), Gemeentemuseum (The Hague, NL, 2008) and Fundacion Antonio Perez (Cuenca, 2011). He has also participated in major group shows at MoMA PS1 (New York, 2004), ZKM Karlsruhe (2008), Palazzo Sant’Elia, Palermo (IT, 2007), L’Art en Europe in Domaine Pommery (Reims, FR, 2008), S.M.A.K. in Ghent (BE, 2011) and CSULB, Long Beach.
An illustrated catalogue is published at the occasion of the exhibition. It contains an essay by Dr. Stefanie Müller, curator at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, who presented a one-man show by Enrique Marty in 2010 and an interview with the artist.
Room III
Tatjana Gerhard: Die neuen Sterblichen
In the last couple of years, Tatjana Gerhard has realized a very personal, remarkable painterly oeuvre. First of all, we may observe that her work in a formal sense is quite unusual. Her paintings are small to medium-sized and brushed in thinly applied oil paint. They are invariably given a glossy finish and have no title. The images are figurative, almost archaic and naive. The figurative world she evokes in her oil paintings is alienating, even if it is reminiscent of the many uncanny worlds in which we grow up and live: tales, fantasies, dreams, stories, etc. Tatjana Gerhard paints quickly, in vague outlines, and limits herself to the most essential elements. The result is recognizable (we understand more or less what we see), although a lot of mystery surrounds the meaning of her images.
Tatjana Gerhard’s exhibition Die neuen Sterblichen (The new Mortals) is her second one-person show with Deweer Gallery. Although her paintings continue to focus on an absolutely free and associative genesis of motives and images and on a very sensible way of dealing with paint and colours, her newest works are characterized by some innovations both in form and content, that strongly recommend a renewed confrontation.
Deweer Gallery introduced Tatjana Gerhard with the solo exhibition Als ob sie alles wussten (As if they knew it all) (2010), that was followed by solos at the Helmhaus in Zurich (2010) and the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris (2011). In 2010, work by Tatjana Gerhard was included in two major exhibitions in Belgium: in Public Private Paintings (Mu.ZEE, Ostend) and in Hareng Saur – Ensor and Contemporary Art (Museum of Fine Arts & S.M.A.K., Ghent). Paintings by Tatjana Gerhard are included in numerous private and public collections, including the S.M.A.K., Ghent and the Kunstmuseum Bern.
