Valérie Favre: Selbstmord. Suicide.
8 June–28 July 2013
Dave Allen / Candice Breitz / Douglas Gordon
n.b.k. Showroom
11 June–26 July 2013
Opening: Friday, 7 June, 7pm
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)
Chausseestraße 128 / 129
10115 Berlin, Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday noon–6pm;
Thursday noon–8pm
Valérie Favre
Selbstmord. Suicide.
8 June–28 July 2013
The exhibition Selbstmord. Suicide at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein presents two extensive groups of works by Valérie Favre. On show will be the Suicide cycle (2003–2013), consisting of 129 small-format paintings, representing the self-chosen death, partly based on actual facts, partly fiction. The starting point of the works is the very moment of the radical decision to end one’s life, and the self-dramatization of the theatrical moment of death as well as the impact on the bereaved. In the classic 18 x 24 cm format, Favre outlines with reduced color shades different types of suicide. In her pictures, she refers to known suicide scenes from history, art and literature as well as from current newspaper reports.
The second group of works still/leben (de la fragilité des fleurs n°5) (2013), which was created especially for the exhibition, consists of large-format canvases as well as a collection of small-format paintings and addresses the creative process of the artist. In preparation for her exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, for three months every day, Favre painted a new still-life of a flower arrangement in her studio. She illustrates the dimension of time within the project in a diary-like style, with one brushstroke at a time on large-format canvases. From the multitude of the small still-lifes, one will be selected on every day of the exhibition and presented in the exhibition space.
Curated by Marius Babias
Biography
Valérie Favre (b. 1959; Evilard, Switzerland) has been teaching as a professor of painting at the University of Arts in Berlin since 2006. From 1980 to 1998, Favre lived in Paris, where she became one of the most important painters of France. Since 1998, she has been living and working in Berlin. Lately her works were exhibited at Château de Tours (2012); Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem (2012); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012); Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine (2010); K21, Dusseldorf (2010); Museum of Art Lucerne (2010); Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin (2009); Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes (2009); Museu de Arte de São Paolo (2009); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); and Kunstverein Ulm (2008) among others.
Publication
To mark the exhibition the publication Selbstmord. Suicide. will be released by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, with a foreword by Marius Babias and an essay by Elisabeth Bronfen.
Program
Thursday, June 20, 7pm
Artist talk with Valérie Favre (artist, Berlin) and Marius Babias (Director n.b.k.)
In German language
Thursday, June 27, 7pm
“The dilemma of painting, today.”
Lecture by Michael Diers (Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg and Humboldt Universität Berlin)
In German language
Thursday, July 18, 7pm
“The Power of Death: a question of representation.”
Lecture by Elisabeth Bronfen (scholar of cultural studies, Professor of English and American Literature, University of Zurich)
In German language
Sunday, July 28, 8pm
Concert by La Stampa (Berlin / Hamburg)
Dave Allen / Candice Breitz / Douglas Gordon
n.b.k. Showroom
11 June–26 July 2013
In the exhibition POPISM, curated by Raimar Stange, Dave Allen (b. 1963), Candice Breitz (b. 1972) and Douglas Gordon (b. 1966) examine the operating system of pop music in order to reflect the contradiction between profit-oriented production and pleasurable consumption in a critical way. The focus is on the fan as that postmodern figure which minimizes the alienation within the pop with its active reception.
