JANUARY 2012
19.01 - 22.01 2012
Art Los Angeles Contemporary. The Barker Hangar. USA
ELASTIC Gallery, Malmö. Sweden
www.artlosangelesfair.com
www.elasticgallery.com
20.01 - 20.02 2012
TERRAIN VIDEO - VIDEO PÅ KANTEN
Holstebro Museum of Contemporary Art
www.holstebrokunstmuseum.dk/da/udstillinger
23.01 - 27.01 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
27.01 - 03.03 2012
UMSTÜLPUNG GROUP SHOW CURATED BY GÜNTER UMBERG
Galerie Nordenhake Berlin
www.nordenhake.com
Participating Artists:
OLLE BAERTLING
JOHN COPLANS
SPENCER FINCH
FRANKA HÖRNSCHEMEYER
HELEN MIRRA
SIROUS NAMAZI
MICHAEL SCHMIDT
FLORIAN SLOTAWA
GÜNTER UMBERG
MAGNUS WALLIN
RÉMY ZAUGG
Galerie Nordenhake has the great pleasure to present a group exhibition curated by Günter Umberg, an artist who has been working with the gallery since many years. Umberg started in the 1980s to realize curatorial projects and installations to enable an enhanced understanding of his highly specific approach to art in general as well as of his own, mostly green or black monochrome paintings in particular. In his exhibition titled "Inversion" he brings together existing works by artist of different generations, who are represented by the gallery. In spite of the fact that the exhibition includes images and photographs in addition to sculptures and installations, Umberg focuses primarily on the sculptural aspects of the works. By presenting the relatively heterogeneous works in well considered, often surprising installations and placements, he unfolds a dynamic dialog between the works as well as with the viewer.
The German term "Umstülpung" —roughly translated as "Inversion" — refers to an action, where the inside is turned out and vice versa. Umberg applies the term in this general meaning and is explicitly not interested in any other philosophical, artist or political ideas associated with it. As title for the exhibition "Inversion" describes a curatorial guideline as well as Umberg's artistic practice.
Though employing different approaches and modes of expression all works in the exhibition share the quality of transcending their everyday materials or subjects. They are open to interpretation and thus allow the viewer complex aesthetic experiences. Umberg encourages the viewer to perceive the works unobstructed by any preconceived notions and concepts or approved art-historical knowledge. He —figuratively speaking— "inverts" the works, i.e. he deliberately presents them in unusual modes or as sculptures to make their specific aesthetical properties become more apparent. He, for instance, displays a single photograph from Michael Schmidt's series "Frauen" (Women) lying flat on a wooden pedestal, or conceives highly uncommon constellations of works that seem to be hugely unrelated. Like John Coplans' self-portrait of his feet which is shown alongside one of Olle Baertling's larger scale geometric-abstractions. The images are installed on oversized easels of different sizes and placed facing each other.
"Inversion" in its meaning of turning the inside out also acts a metaphor for an artistic practice. For Umberg art is a product of the whole body. It is a mental as well as physical process that passes through the entire body and manifests itself as an artwork. Umberg achieves the dense, deep and rigorously non-figurative surfaces, that are so peculiar to his art, in a meticulous and repetitive process by applying up to 100 layers of pure dry pigment over the course of weeks or month. His paintings are thus a personal expression of his painterly actions. Without reference to anything outside the painting's materials they enable for direct interaction with the surrounding space and the viewer.
"We understand seeing too much as a thought process instead of appropriating it bodily", Umberg explains. "The observer should be active, aware and present, speechless, and open to recognition."
Curated by GÜNTER UMBERG
14.01 2011 - 15.01 2012
Absolute Installation
Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo Norway
FEBRUARY 2012
16.02 - 19.02 2011
MARKET 2011, Stockholm, Sweden
ELASTIC Gallery, Malmö
www.market-art.se
www.elasticgallery.com
17.02 - 29.02 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
20.01 - 20.02 2012
TERRAIN VIDEO - VIDEO PÅ KANTEN
Holstebro Museum of Contemporary Art
27.01 - 03.03 2012
UMSTÜLPUNG GROUP SHOW CURATED BY GÜNTER UMBERG
Galerie Nordenhake Berlin
MARCH 2012
19.03 - 23.03 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
27.01 - 03.03 2012
UMSTÜLPUNG GROUP SHOW CURATED BY GÜNTER UMBERG
Galerie Nordenhake Berlin
APRIL 2012
02.04 - 05.04 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
18.04 - 22.04 2012
Banamex, Mexico City, Mexico
ELASTIC Gallery, Malmö
www.zonamaco.com
www.elasticgallery.com
13.04 - 29.04 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
MAY 2012
18.05 - 26.05 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
JUNE 2012
11.06 - 17.06 2012
ART BASEL 43, Galerie Nordenhake Berlin
www.artbasel.com
www.nordenhake.com
JULY 2012
TBA
AUGUST 2012
TBA
SEPTEMBER 2012
29.09 2012 - 13.01 2013
MODERNA MUSEET, Malmö, Sweden
www.modernamuseet.se/sv/Malmo/Utstallningar/2012/SUPERSURREALISM/
Surrealism is a movement that has never faded. Vital and current art with surrealist elements is still being created. By means of shock, surprise and disturbance, artists seek to stir up the inner reality behind the viewer's outer, rigid conventions and restricting inhibitions.
Moderna Museet has an eminent collection of surrealism from the crucial years round 1920-40, comprising paintings, sculptures and objects. It includes Louise Bourgeois, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wilhelm Freddie, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Picabia, Man Ray and Meret Oppenheim. These artists, together with the equally prominent photographers Brassaï, Hans Bellmer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Lotte Jacobi and Paul Strand, films by Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren from the same period, will form the core of the exhibition, which also features works from the period after the Second World War to today.
Contemporary works by artists such as Nathalie Djurberg, Dana Schutz and Magnus Wallin are juxtaposed with post-war existential depths, 1960s psychedelic art, sexual liberation and transgressive approaches on identity. The prehistory of surrealism will also be dealt with in a spatial curiosity cabinet. Altogether, the exhibition is an eruption of supersurrealistic images.
Curator by John Peter Nilsson.
OCTOBER 2012
October 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
29.09 2012 - 13.01 2013
MODERNA MUSEET, Malmö, Sweden
NOVEMBER 2012
November 2012
Workshop & Studio visits. Bachelor programme BFA.
Academy of Fine Arts Umeå University
Guest professor: Magnus Wallin
www.umu.se/art/index_eng.html
29.09 2012 - 13.01 2013
MODERNA MUSEET, Malmö, Sweden
DECEMBER 2012
29.09 2012 - 13.01 2013
MODERNA MUSEET, Malmö, Sweden