ERWIN BOHATSCH
Verläufe Gradients
28 January until 19 March 2006
Opening: Friday, 27 January 2006, 7pm
Curator: Christa Steinle
Neue Galerie Graz
Sackstrasse 16, A-8010 Graz www.neuegalerie.at
In the 1980s Neue Galerie Graz earned an international reputation as an outstanding and unique Austrian institution through its significant contribution to the positioning of the Austrian school of New Painting in the international competition of the “hunger for pictures” (W.M. Faust, G. de Vries). The latter term was used to describe the new optimism of painting in Germany and Italy.
In recent years, in order to illustrate how this generation of Austrian painters contributed to developments in painting, Neue Galerie has presented monographic selected examples of representatives of this generation and their uvre, e.g. Herbert Brandl, in comprehensive exhibitions and catalogues.
In the 1980s the center for new Austrian painting was positioned in Styria and it transpires that in the present phase of painting, Styrian born artists have succeeded in maintaining their leading positions. This is particularly well illustrated through the example of Erwin Bohatsch, to whom Neue Galerie dedicates a personal exhibition this year and, furthermore, through the example of Hubert Schmalix whose 2007 exhibition is currently at the planning stage. Erwin Bohatsch’s oeuvre shows a development from a painter of modernism into a painter of the second modernism. This can be attributed to the fact that, atypically for Austria, he did not slavishly deal with abstraction in the abstraction of nature, but rather drove it forward, transmogrifying into a contemporary dialectic reflective abstraction.
This exhibition provides a essential review of Erwin Bohatsch’s development as a painter, from the beginnings of the 1980s up to today, moreover at a historical point in time when all signs are pointing to the fact that his uvre will again have a strong presence and draw a lot of attention.
From 27 May until 16 July 2006 the exhibition will be presented at Museum Moderner Kunst Passau Stiftung Wörlen.
Exhibition catalogue: “Erwin Bohatsch: Verläufe Gradients”, with essays by Günther Holler-Schuster, Brigitte Huck, Rainer Metzger, Denys Zacharopoulos and an interview by Christa Steinle with Erwin Bohatsch. (168 pages, German/English, illustrated, Hatje Cantz publishers, Ostfildern-Ruit)
Contact:
Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum
Sackstrasse 16, A-8010 Graz / Austria
T 43-316-82 91 55 / F 43-316-81 54 01
neuegalerie@museum-joanneum.at www.neuegalerie.at
Opening times: TueSun 10am6 pm, Thu 10am8pm