Ratheesh t
|
GREEN POND |
29.04. - 31.05.2011 |
pictures
DOWNLOAD 8,678.7 kB DOWNLOAD 1,369.8 kB Smiling Land, 2010
oil on canvassigned, dated and titled on the verso
184 x 213 cm
©Ratheesh T
Phography: Anil Rane, Commercial Art Engravers Pvt. Ltd.
courtesy Galerie Michael Haas
DOWNLOAD 441.5 kB War Baby, 2010
oil on canvassigned, dated and titled on the verso
244 x 183 cm
©Ratheesh T
Photography: Anil Rane, Commercial Art Engravers Pvt. Ltd.
courtesy Galerie Michael Haas
DOWNLOAD 429.4 kB Self-Portrait, 2009
oil on canvassigned, dated and titled on the verso
183 x 146,3 cm
©Ratheesh T
Photography: Anil Rane, Commercial Art Engravers Pvt. Ltd.
courtesy Galerie Michael Haas
DOWNLOAD 864.7 kB Portrait Ratheesh T, 2011
by Gajanan Dudhalkar
© Gajanan Dudhalkar
courtesy Galerie Michael Haas
texts
Press Release
Ratheesh T
Green Pond
29th April until 31st May 2011
Opening
Friday 29th April 2011, 4pm until 9pm
The artist will be in attendance
In his first solo exhibition in Europe, the young Indian artist Ratheesh T depicts a world between fairytale and a nightmare in his large format paintings at Galerie Michael Haas.
The consequences of globalisation, the role of world religions, art and the use of natural resources, nature, our environment, these are the themes and the associated debates addressed by Ratheesh T. The artist was born in 1980 in Kilimanoor, Kerala in India. In his new oil on canvas works, he forcefully compresses complex narratives in rich, deep colours. He develops his artistic identity based on his own culture instead of making the familiar attempt to imitate or copy Western Art, thus giving his work authenticity, whilst at the same captivating through their contemporary and universal interpretations.
Ratheesh T grants the viewer a direct insight in to the world inside his own mind. As if one could participate in his concerns, such as the overpopulation and expansion of cities and industries in his home country. Yet his new works in particular urge the need for reflection. Vast scenes à la Pieter Brueghel the Elder depict 7 headed snakes, worlds of leaves, skulls, and small, virtually minute crowds of people. In Smiling Land from 2010 a large black cat licks the fighting warriors away, as if nature were to take power over humans, painters fly through the air, in addition to a golden Oscar award and cars. The viewer is challenged to consider the world he lives in and also his personal and collective responsibility for this world.
Ratheesh T studied painting at the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum, where he lives and works. After his B.F.A. he received a scholarship in 2004 from the British Royal Overseas League for a residency in England.
A catalogue with a text by Gieve Patel accompanies the exhibition.
Anna Hellner
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Ratheesh T
Green Pond
29th April until 31st May 2011
Opening
Friday 29th April 2011, 4pm until 9pm
The artist will be in attendance
In his first solo exhibition in Europe, the young Indian artist Ratheesh T depicts a world between fairytale and a nightmare in his large format paintings at Galerie Michael Haas.
The consequences of globalisation, the role of world religions, art and the use of natural resources, nature, our environment, these are the themes and the associated debates addressed by Ratheesh T. The artist was born in 1980 in Kilimanoor, Kerala in India. In his new oil on canvas works, he forcefully compresses complex narratives in rich, deep colours. He develops his artistic identity based on his own culture instead of making the familiar attempt to imitate or copy Western Art, thus giving his work authenticity, whilst at the same captivating through their contemporary and universal interpretations.
Ratheesh T grants the viewer a direct insight in to the world inside his own mind. As if one could participate in his concerns, such as the overpopulation and expansion of cities and industries in his home country. Yet his new works in particular urge the need for reflection. Vast scenes à la Pieter Brueghel the Elder depict 7 headed snakes, worlds of leaves, skulls, and small, virtually minute crowds of people. In Smiling Land from 2010 a large black cat licks the fighting warriors away, as if nature were to take power over humans, painters fly through the air, in addition to a golden Oscar award and cars. The viewer is challenged to consider the world he lives in and also his personal and collective responsibility for this world.
Ratheesh T studied painting at the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum, where he lives and works. After his B.F.A. he received a scholarship in 2004 from the British Royal Overseas League for a residency in England.
A catalogue with a text by Gieve Patel accompanies the exhibition.
Anna Hellner
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Richard jordan |
A Sense of History |
12.02. - 11.03.2011 |
texts
Press Release
Richard Jordan
Midlife – A Sense of History
12th February until 11th March 2011
Opening
Friday 11th February 2011, 7pm until 9pm
Richard Jordan explores the boundaries between the self and its environment in his most recent series of paintings, ‘A Sense of History (Midlife)’ at Galerie Michael Haas.
After a lengthy period of abstract painting Richard Jordan's (1957* Ohio, USA) new large format oil on canvas works are now figurative, representing the individual through the portrayal of his own body. In search of the self he explores his personal relationship to the world, and simultaneously addresses universal themes such as time, age, transience, masculinity, as well as the intrinsic role of man and the artist.
Who is this ‘me’ that lives inside us? At times colourful and laughing, at times meditative - eyes closed, shielded and isolated, or secure and focused. A superhero in an orange suit with a green face, or a small boy that enjoys the snow and in turn the snowman that he can build. Simultaneously Jordan addresses a classic genre of painting, the portrait, as well as essential concepts of art history, such as the Renaissance rules of proportion. Person, man, artist - at times the transitions are fluid, like the traces of colour on several of his new paintings. In reduced contours, yet with powerful and intensely colourful accents, Jordan investigates the nature of man. Jordan’s figures move between dream and reality, portrait and abstract form, black silhouettes and deliberate allowed gradients. The paintings grant us a profound insight into an extremely reflective, direct, and at times relentless internal dialogue.
In the late 1970s Richard Jordan studied visual art at the Syracuse University in New York and completed his M.A. in 1982 in Bennington, Vermont. Preceding his relocation to Berlin in 1985 he worked as an assistant to Helen Frankenhalter who to this day, along with Hans Hofmann, is still one of his major influences.
A catalogue with a text by Anke Sterneborg accompanies the exhibition.
Anna Hellner
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Richard Jordan
Midlife – A Sense of History
12th February until 11th March 2011
Opening
Friday 11th February 2011, 7pm until 9pm
Richard Jordan explores the boundaries between the self and its environment in his most recent series of paintings, ‘A Sense of History (Midlife)’ at Galerie Michael Haas.
After a lengthy period of abstract painting Richard Jordan's (1957* Ohio, USA) new large format oil on canvas works are now figurative, representing the individual through the portrayal of his own body. In search of the self he explores his personal relationship to the world, and simultaneously addresses universal themes such as time, age, transience, masculinity, as well as the intrinsic role of man and the artist.
Who is this ‘me’ that lives inside us? At times colourful and laughing, at times meditative - eyes closed, shielded and isolated, or secure and focused. A superhero in an orange suit with a green face, or a small boy that enjoys the snow and in turn the snowman that he can build. Simultaneously Jordan addresses a classic genre of painting, the portrait, as well as essential concepts of art history, such as the Renaissance rules of proportion. Person, man, artist - at times the transitions are fluid, like the traces of colour on several of his new paintings. In reduced contours, yet with powerful and intensely colourful accents, Jordan investigates the nature of man. Jordan’s figures move between dream and reality, portrait and abstract form, black silhouettes and deliberate allowed gradients. The paintings grant us a profound insight into an extremely reflective, direct, and at times relentless internal dialogue.
In the late 1970s Richard Jordan studied visual art at the Syracuse University in New York and completed his M.A. in 1982 in Bennington, Vermont. Preceding his relocation to Berlin in 1985 he worked as an assistant to Helen Frankenhalter who to this day, along with Hans Hofmann, is still one of his major influences.
A catalogue with a text by Anke Sterneborg accompanies the exhibition.
Anna Hellner
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RenÉ wirtHs |
Here & Beyond |
20.11. - 23.12.2010 |
texts
Press Release
René Wirths
Here & Beyond
20. November - 23. December 2010
Opening
Friday, 19. November 2010
6 til 9 pm
The artist will be present.
The second solo exhibition of René Wirths
A loaf of bread, a wooden chair or a tennis shoe as points of departure for painterly approaches to the world.
“The object is the occasion for me to paint a picture.” Often they are the completely banal objects of our visible world that incite the painter – born in 1967 in Waldbröl in the region of Bergisches Land and now living in Berlin – to create an image. A crumpled piece of paper or a motorcycle are just as interesting to René Wirths as a roll of toilet paper. Its visible shell intrigues him. He depicts it in extreme detail in oil on canvas and thereby plumbs the meaning of the thing beyond its real, tangible existence. Under the title “Here & Beyond” Galerie Michael Haas is showing a selection of the artist’s newest works. In the summer of 2011 the Kunsthalle Rotterdam will stage the first, large showcase of the artist (25.6.-18.9.2011).
Most often it is the surface of an object the gives René Wirths the initial stimulus and leads him to choose a particular motif: the crumpled leather of a tennis shoe, the structure of a wooden board, a skull. His subject matter is sometimes greatly enlarged and stretches across a canvas just big enough for the depiction. From the first moment, Wirths takes the object as a whole in view and only paints what he perceives visually. With each step he approaches the object more closely and more thoroughly. To begin with he paints in broad strokes with a large brush, later the brushes become finer, the painting gains in dimensions. Wirths dives into the microcosm of his objects’ surfaces and grants access to the thing. Knowledge is derived through perception. The painting becomes abstract and reaches a point at which only condensed shrouds and structures are depicted. Now the image breaks free from the real object. The loaf of bread is no longer bread, but a formation. It is appearance and being in one.
René Wirths has lived in Berlin since 1970 and studied visual arts at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste from 1992 to 1998. He was a master student of Wolfgang Petrick.
Caroline Flosdorff
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René Wirths
Here & Beyond
20. November - 23. December 2010
Opening
Friday, 19. November 2010
6 til 9 pm
The artist will be present.
The second solo exhibition of René Wirths
A loaf of bread, a wooden chair or a tennis shoe as points of departure for painterly approaches to the world.
“The object is the occasion for me to paint a picture.” Often they are the completely banal objects of our visible world that incite the painter – born in 1967 in Waldbröl in the region of Bergisches Land and now living in Berlin – to create an image. A crumpled piece of paper or a motorcycle are just as interesting to René Wirths as a roll of toilet paper. Its visible shell intrigues him. He depicts it in extreme detail in oil on canvas and thereby plumbs the meaning of the thing beyond its real, tangible existence. Under the title “Here & Beyond” Galerie Michael Haas is showing a selection of the artist’s newest works. In the summer of 2011 the Kunsthalle Rotterdam will stage the first, large showcase of the artist (25.6.-18.9.2011).
Most often it is the surface of an object the gives René Wirths the initial stimulus and leads him to choose a particular motif: the crumpled leather of a tennis shoe, the structure of a wooden board, a skull. His subject matter is sometimes greatly enlarged and stretches across a canvas just big enough for the depiction. From the first moment, Wirths takes the object as a whole in view and only paints what he perceives visually. With each step he approaches the object more closely and more thoroughly. To begin with he paints in broad strokes with a large brush, later the brushes become finer, the painting gains in dimensions. Wirths dives into the microcosm of his objects’ surfaces and grants access to the thing. Knowledge is derived through perception. The painting becomes abstract and reaches a point at which only condensed shrouds and structures are depicted. Now the image breaks free from the real object. The loaf of bread is no longer bread, but a formation. It is appearance and being in one.
René Wirths has lived in Berlin since 1970 and studied visual arts at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste from 1992 to 1998. He was a master student of Wolfgang Petrick.
Caroline Flosdorff
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Dimitris tzamouranis
|
NEW PAINTINGS |
8.10. - 13.11.2010 |
texts
Press Release
Dimitris Tzamouranis
New Paintings
8. October til 13. November 2010
Opening
Thurday, 7. October 2010
6 til 9 pm
The artist will be present.
Galerie Michael Haas and Galerie Haas & Fuchs are showing paintings of the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis
At the same time as Art Forum Berlin Galerie Michael Haas and Galerie Haas & Fuchs opened an exhibition with new paintings by the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis (*1967, Kalamata, Greece) in their rooms in Niebuhrstraße 5. Tzamouranis, who has been living in Berlin since 1990, works on canvas and copper. All works were created in 2009 and 2010.
The figures in Tzamouranis’ pictorial world all originate from his immediate environment. Clothing, make-up and hairstyles mark them as modern people of the 21st century. Yet the artist still captures them in many of his paintings in constellations that evoke known, historical, mythological or religious themes in the viewer. In this way “Soika and Eva” are found in the pose of a Pietà, “Dancers” is reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, and the large format painting “Die Nacht” (“The Night”) reminds one of Ferdinand Hodler’s work of the same name. Tzamouranis uses art history as a field of inspiration, takes a familiar pictorial language and thereby gives the viewer a sense of recognition. He utilizes this effect consciously, plays with associations and out of it develops his pictorial world. In this world he deals with topics from his horizon of experience, things from his immediate environment. Does “Die Nacht” depict a refugee camp or are these youths sleeping off the inebriation of a party? The artist leaves this open and thereby gives the viewer space for their own thoughts and projections.
After studying painting at the art academy in Thessaloniki, Greece Tzamouranis came to Berlin in 1990 at the age of 23, becoming a master student at the Hochschule der Künste . In 1999 he travelled to Istanbul for a year on a grant from the Berlin Senate. Around the turn of the millennium several works of video and film were created that lead to the expansion of the pictorial language in his paintings. His works were represented by private and public collections and were shown in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin, among others.
A catalogue with a text from Christos M. Joachimides was published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Andrea Helfenrath
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“An eye, cut into strips, does justice to all of this.” PAUL CELAN
Since the beginning of the 90s painting has once again gained a significant presence in our visual environment. In all the pores of artistic activity painting steps forth in diverse forms, possessing an extensive medium that, since the beginning of the 20th century, continually reappears: sometimes hailed as triumphant and defining, at others denounced as passé and reactionary. Today there is no trace of a "direction" or tendency. Instead there is an extreme individuation of painterly offerings feeding from every trough. A return to the forms of surrealism that engage young artists, a complex transformation and filtration of the flood of media, but also a very subjective confrontation with geometric abstraction. The repeated, monotone reference to the metamodern as a constant rumination of out-dated theoretical positions and categories, all of which have no purchase on our present day, is no aid in understanding the painting of today. Instead, the impressive breadth and mass of painterly offerings leads to a consideration of the dimensions of quantity that befit the "new" and the seemingly anarchic future. That is to say, the curiosity of the public which painting so zealously celebrates and which is also found once and again in many collections. Many artists of this generation often make their beginnings with the investigation of video, including works of film as well. Dimitris Tzamouranis, at 23, came to Berlin's HdK in 1990 following art school in Thessaloniki. He began to work on video with increasing intensity. In 1999 he went to Istanbul for one year with a residency from the Berlin Senate. This year and the multi-layered experiences he had in this fascinating, contradictory city between the Orient and Occident, culminated in his video "Die Flut" (“The Flood”), 1999 (52 min). Having returned to Berlin he made the video "Selbstschnitt, ein Portrait von Wolfgang Harth" (“Self-Incision, a Portrait of Wolfgang Harth”), 2001 (9 min) in which a doctor performs an operation on himself. Parallel to this key video work Tzamouranis sought analogies and correspondences in painterly processes. Thus in 2001 came the first paintings with a personal, realistic pictorial language – the beginning of a path that we are still following today.
The new, initially realistic language became slowly unmoored as Tzamouranis probed curiously into the interior of his figures, "Umarmung" (“Embrace”), 2004.
The landscapes around them become more verdant, even traces of Art Nouveau are apparent. They mix with the unexpected figures that move ever more decisively into the inner mysteriousness. With the grand compositions "Kinderspiel" (“Child’s Play”) and "Das Haus" (“The House”) Tzamouranis achieved in 2005 a security and plasticity of tectonics in which reality and fantasy melt into one another. The persons that populate Tzamouranis' pictures in various constellations all come from his immediate environment. This creates a specific intimacy between the image that we observe and the pictorial narrative that it conveys to us as, for example, in the painting "Dancers" (2010) that contains traces of both the Last Supper as well as the central figure of a "Zeibekiko" dancer in a Greek tavern. The density and the expressiveness of this painting also result from this extreme ambivalence. The large-format panorama of many children laying close to one another "Die Nacht" (2010) is a mysterious nocturno that gives us a sense of his deeply poetic calm through an introverted painting style. From these paintings a second track leads to portraiture. Tzamouranis attempts to decode the female visage, from a strict, almost ceremonial beginning that rewrites the figure in a statuary manner to, in recent years, the perception of an eroticized atmosphere. Here a reclining young woman, a classical theme of art history, is made dynamic and made known through a vibrating sensuality, "Soika" (2009). Tzamouranis is a wanderer through the art and the art history that he reflects as a kaleidoscope of his own imagination.
Christos M. Joachimides
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Dimitris Tzamouranis
New Paintings
8. October til 13. November 2010
Opening
Thurday, 7. October 2010
6 til 9 pm
The artist will be present.
Galerie Michael Haas and Galerie Haas & Fuchs are showing paintings of the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis
At the same time as Art Forum Berlin Galerie Michael Haas and Galerie Haas & Fuchs opened an exhibition with new paintings by the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis (*1967, Kalamata, Greece) in their rooms in Niebuhrstraße 5. Tzamouranis, who has been living in Berlin since 1990, works on canvas and copper. All works were created in 2009 and 2010.
The figures in Tzamouranis’ pictorial world all originate from his immediate environment. Clothing, make-up and hairstyles mark them as modern people of the 21st century. Yet the artist still captures them in many of his paintings in constellations that evoke known, historical, mythological or religious themes in the viewer. In this way “Soika and Eva” are found in the pose of a Pietà, “Dancers” is reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, and the large format painting “Die Nacht” (“The Night”) reminds one of Ferdinand Hodler’s work of the same name. Tzamouranis uses art history as a field of inspiration, takes a familiar pictorial language and thereby gives the viewer a sense of recognition. He utilizes this effect consciously, plays with associations and out of it develops his pictorial world. In this world he deals with topics from his horizon of experience, things from his immediate environment. Does “Die Nacht” depict a refugee camp or are these youths sleeping off the inebriation of a party? The artist leaves this open and thereby gives the viewer space for their own thoughts and projections.
After studying painting at the art academy in Thessaloniki, Greece Tzamouranis came to Berlin in 1990 at the age of 23, becoming a master student at the Hochschule der Künste . In 1999 he travelled to Istanbul for a year on a grant from the Berlin Senate. Around the turn of the millennium several works of video and film were created that lead to the expansion of the pictorial language in his paintings. His works were represented by private and public collections and were shown in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin, among others.
A catalogue with a text from Christos M. Joachimides was published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Andrea Helfenrath
DOWNLOAD OF THE PRESS RELEASE
“An eye, cut into strips, does justice to all of this.” PAUL CELAN
Since the beginning of the 90s painting has once again gained a significant presence in our visual environment. In all the pores of artistic activity painting steps forth in diverse forms, possessing an extensive medium that, since the beginning of the 20th century, continually reappears: sometimes hailed as triumphant and defining, at others denounced as passé and reactionary. Today there is no trace of a "direction" or tendency. Instead there is an extreme individuation of painterly offerings feeding from every trough. A return to the forms of surrealism that engage young artists, a complex transformation and filtration of the flood of media, but also a very subjective confrontation with geometric abstraction. The repeated, monotone reference to the metamodern as a constant rumination of out-dated theoretical positions and categories, all of which have no purchase on our present day, is no aid in understanding the painting of today. Instead, the impressive breadth and mass of painterly offerings leads to a consideration of the dimensions of quantity that befit the "new" and the seemingly anarchic future. That is to say, the curiosity of the public which painting so zealously celebrates and which is also found once and again in many collections. Many artists of this generation often make their beginnings with the investigation of video, including works of film as well. Dimitris Tzamouranis, at 23, came to Berlin's HdK in 1990 following art school in Thessaloniki. He began to work on video with increasing intensity. In 1999 he went to Istanbul for one year with a residency from the Berlin Senate. This year and the multi-layered experiences he had in this fascinating, contradictory city between the Orient and Occident, culminated in his video "Die Flut" (“The Flood”), 1999 (52 min). Having returned to Berlin he made the video "Selbstschnitt, ein Portrait von Wolfgang Harth" (“Self-Incision, a Portrait of Wolfgang Harth”), 2001 (9 min) in which a doctor performs an operation on himself. Parallel to this key video work Tzamouranis sought analogies and correspondences in painterly processes. Thus in 2001 came the first paintings with a personal, realistic pictorial language – the beginning of a path that we are still following today.
The new, initially realistic language became slowly unmoored as Tzamouranis probed curiously into the interior of his figures, "Umarmung" (“Embrace”), 2004.
The landscapes around them become more verdant, even traces of Art Nouveau are apparent. They mix with the unexpected figures that move ever more decisively into the inner mysteriousness. With the grand compositions "Kinderspiel" (“Child’s Play”) and "Das Haus" (“The House”) Tzamouranis achieved in 2005 a security and plasticity of tectonics in which reality and fantasy melt into one another. The persons that populate Tzamouranis' pictures in various constellations all come from his immediate environment. This creates a specific intimacy between the image that we observe and the pictorial narrative that it conveys to us as, for example, in the painting "Dancers" (2010) that contains traces of both the Last Supper as well as the central figure of a "Zeibekiko" dancer in a Greek tavern. The density and the expressiveness of this painting also result from this extreme ambivalence. The large-format panorama of many children laying close to one another "Die Nacht" (2010) is a mysterious nocturno that gives us a sense of his deeply poetic calm through an introverted painting style. From these paintings a second track leads to portraiture. Tzamouranis attempts to decode the female visage, from a strict, almost ceremonial beginning that rewrites the figure in a statuary manner to, in recent years, the perception of an eroticized atmosphere. Here a reclining young woman, a classical theme of art history, is made dynamic and made known through a vibrating sensuality, "Soika" (2009). Tzamouranis is a wanderer through the art and the art history that he reflects as a kaleidoscope of his own imagination.
Christos M. Joachimides
DOWNLOAD OF THE TEXT