Galerie Ernst Hilger
at ArtBasel 2007
June 13 – 17, 2007
Booth A2
Galerie Ernst Hilger
Dorotheergasse 5
A-1010 Vienna
Tel: 43-1-512 53 15
http://www.hilger.at
ERRÓ – MAO’S GRANDCHILDREN
Erró’s most recent Chinese paintings are adorned with breathtaking, densely woven, and sensuous ornaments, linking the alluring beauty of details to an almost classical composition. This is a China depicted as a garden of pleasure and cheerfulness.
And yet the question that we ask ourselves is, What is this all about? Is this still about China, the country around which Erró’s art has revolved since the early 1970s? Is it still the China that once both fascinated and frightened the world?
Erró depicts in his new Chinese paintings the irrevocably lost melancholy of our banal present history. Everything is offered, everything is within reach, everything can be bought. Rather than a joyful, sociable, and self-confident Mao, his grandchildren are offered for sale: smiling Chinese dolls, an odd mixture of cheerful Buddhas and good-natured, innocently smiling children. They are mass-scale products, manufactured to please as many prospective customers as possible. They are glad because they are ignorant of history. Their innocence is the price that must be paid for their cheerfulness and serenity. Their ornamental congeniality is the new simulacrum that may be even more seductive, even more compelling than the earlier clichés of global revolution: taking pleasure without incurring any risk.
Lóránd Hegyi, May 2007
Further artists at ArtBasel 2007: Asgar/Gabriel, Daniele Buetti, Oliver Dorfer, John Gerrard, Flavio Favelli, Allen Jones, Keith Haring, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Jiri Kolar, Ángel Marcos, Brian McKee, Jacques Monory, Helmut Newton, Hermann Nitsch, Mimmo Palladino, Mel Ramos, Mimmo Rotella, Massimo Vitali, Andy Warhol.
For further information please contact the gallery: ernst.hilger@hilger.at.
Ernst Hilger Gallery — since 1971.