FRANZ ACKERMANN
HOME, HOME AGAIN
Curator: Caroline Käedingand Javier Panera
LEE BUL:
ASEPTIA
Curator: Paco Barragán
Domus Artium 2002
Contemporary Art Centre Salamanca
Avenida de la Aldehuela s/n
37003 Salamanca, Spain
Phone 34-923184916
Fax 34-923183235
Email :da2@ciudaddecultura.org
www.ciudaddecultura.org
Franz Ackermann
Home, Home Again
9th February 8th April 2007
The first individual exhibition in Spain by German artist Franz Ackermann.
Organized by DA2 Salamanca and Bancaja
Franz Ackermann is one of the most internationally renowned German artists and one of the great renovators of visual language during the last decade.
Finalist of the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize in 2004, his large scale installations have been shown in museums and shows throughout the world, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Kunsthalle in Basel, the Sao Paulo Biennial, Lyon Contemporary Art Biennial, Palais de Tokio in Paris and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
Ackerman has made travelling the process and subject matter of his work. The artist essentially works at two levels: one very large scale, and the other very small. The small scale, pocket sized travel pieces called Mental Maps, are very personal and vaguely organic-looking images that the artist compiles as soon as he arrives in a new town, and which can be fitted easily within his suitcase. On the other hand, in his Berlin studio, the artist dedicates his time to Evasions – giant paintings that present an almost psychedelic explosion of colour with an unstable perspective producing an astounding sensation of departure from reality.
In Ackermanns installations, the painting bursts over the edges of the canvas, springing out from the wall, sometimes with photographs and three dimensional objects embedded within it. The work totally fills the space, surrounding the viewer who finds himself submerged in its operatic colours and violent shapes, creating an explosive, apocalyptic effect.
In his exhibition for DA2 in Salamanca, Franz Ackermann will present two new installations using paintings produced in 2006, Home, Home Again and 23 Ghosts, created specifically for the space at DA2 Salamanca and the Kestnergesellshaft in Hannover, co-curator of the show.
This exhibition is sponsored by Bancaja.
Lee Bul: Aseptia
26 January-25 March 2007
Lee Bul (1964, Yongwol, South Korea) is one of the most promising Korean artists whose prolific practice encompasses drawing, painting, video, sculpture, and installation. Since the mid 1990s her work has been exhibited internationally in major solo and group shows such as the Hugo Boss Prize 1998, the Venice Biennial (1999), the New Museum, New York (2002) or the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2004).
Lee Bul has gained international recognition through her challenging and provocative sculptures of cyborgs and monsters. In Lee Bul: Aseptia, the artists first solo exhibition in Spain, the Domus Artium 2 (DA2) presents a selection of works from 1999 to the present. Among them are nine new works produced especially for this show: two new Cyborg sculptures, one new Anagram, a figurative crystal sculpture, and a suite of five drawings.
As curator Paco Barragán points out, Lee Bul:Aseptia offers a new and challenging reading of her work. The exhibition deals with aseptia from a visual and conceptual point of view. The selection of works presented here not only look visually asepticshades of white and greybut they deal conceptually with this whole idea of aseptia, for example the body exposed to physical decay in its daily journey. On another level, the exhibition examines this omnipresent idea of aseptia that afflicts todays society caused by the impossibility of changing the world. The big utopias haven fallen apart. The citizens anger as he witnesses impotently wars, hunger, diseases, and injustice is channeled towards that which is within his own reach: his body.
For Lee Bul beauty and monstrosity are extremes that are intertwined with each other. They represent societys actual anxiety. Her cyborgs and monsters are seductive, engaging, and beautiful. They allow us, as human beings, to rethink our relationship with society, technology, and nature and challenge the worlds aseptiabewitched with its equally aseptic globalization process.
For additional information:
Domus Artium (DA2)
E-mail: da2@ciudaddecultura.org
Press: programacion.tec.da2@ciudaddecultura.org