Baselitz-McCarthy
Inbetween
21 June–5 October 2015
Artistconversation: 21 June, 1pm, with Georg Baselitz and Paul McCarthy
mandatory RSVP required due to limited capacity
Opening: 21 June,2–4pm
The George Economou Collection
80 Kifissias Avenue
15125, Marousi
Athens
Greece
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–6pm
Free entrance
T +30 2108090595
www.thegeorgeeconomoucollection.com
CuratedbyPaulSchimmelandCarlaSchulz-Hoffmann
The George Economou Collection is pleased to announce the exhibition Inbetween curated by Paul Schimmel and Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, opening 21 June in the collection’s gallery space in Athens, Greece.
Inbetween presents a historical and cultural crossover rendered in this context by two monumental artists, Georg Baselitz and Paul McCarthy. A radical debut pairing, it is likewise a first critical approach to link two living artists reacting to their unique and adverse post war conditions in Germany and America through to present day. The rigorous work reveals parallels in subject, form, psychological preoccupations and the extreme rejection of the establishment in their respective worlds.
In the words of co-curator Paul Schimmel, “Both are considered postmodern artists whose practices remain firmly grounded in modernism; they have a common interest in the abject, and each has moved from painting into sculpture or vice versa. The chopped picture planes of Baselitz’s two-dimensional paintings became chopped sculptural forms, and McCarthy, who began within three-dimensional space through his performative actions, moved into two-dimensional paintings at this later stage in his career.
The idea of displacement from East to West has also played heavily on both artists, with Baselitz experiencing a profound change in culture from East to West Germany, and McCarthy the same when he moved from Utah to San Francisco, California. Early in their lives, each artist encountered a moment of liberation that contrasted with the hierarchies and structures constituting their youth, resulting in both turning away from the authority in which they were raised: Baselitz with communism and McCarthy with the Mormon church.
In terms of the artists’ late work there appears to be, as with the work of many other artists in the history of art, a clear reflection and awareness of their own mortality. With Baselitz, there are simultaneously simplified yet dense, dark and obscure representations of a point of passage from the beginning to the end, or another world, not unlike those found in Francisco Goya’s “Black Paintings.” With McCarthy, the pairing of Horizontal (2012), in which he is trying to defy death itself, alongside the hyperrealist sculpture That Girl (2012), brings to light the artists’ common desire to carry themselves forward beyond their mortality.” – Schimmel, 2015
RSVP for the artist talk: info [at] economoucollection.com
Press contact
Annie-Claire Geisinger
acgeisinger [at] economoucollection.com / T +30 2108090595 / M +30 6947404053
