Month: April 2010

WYSTAWA

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Briefly pausing while passing by, attracted yet still keeping one’s distance. Every pane of glass a new picture, and every window a separate creation.

Display windows have always been places of exposition. Filled with items, products or information they catch the hasty gaze of the passer-by and demand attention. The objects seem close enough to grasp and yet remain out of reach. Display windows are places of longing, of projection and of desire. Glass partitions create an inside and an outside and at the same time allow the product area to become a quasi-imaginative space.

For the exhibition WYSTAWA at the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw the showcase rooms of the former furniture shop will revert to their original function. Each of its display windows will become the site of a new artistic work—each artist will create a multi-levelled room that can only be viewed through the windows. The fleeting reflection of the passer-by indicates the glassy division line and, at the same time, becomes a hidden element of the artistic composition. The work is always visible to everyone, no threshold needs to be crossed, and no admission is charged. The interior space belongs exclusively to the passer-by as much as it becomes a floating element of the passage. The museum itself will remain closed. Ten display windows (Wystawa) turn into one exhibition (Wystawa).

Curated by Susanne Pfeffer, Curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art
An exhibition presented by KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin

WYSTAWA is part of the project “The Promised City”, a cultural initiative between Berlin and Warsaw with performances in Mumbai and Bucharest: Artists, curators and academics from Germany, Poland, India, and Romania develop various new creative productions. All of which are interdisciplinary and evolve around subjects of dreams, illusions, and promises of modern metropolises.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Norbert Prangenberg

Norbert-Prangenberg

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of the paintings of Norbert Prangenberg.  This will be the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery and is presented in collaboration with Bernd Schellhorn of Berlin, Germany.

Included in the exhibition will be a selection of approximately 30 recent paintings.  Although primarily known as a sculptor, Prangenberg has always worked in a variety of media; his sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints are recognized as equally significant.  And one media is not exclusive of the other; for example his ceramics very much influence the tactile way in which he applies his paint.  Throughout all of his work, his fundamental relationship between sight and touch, eye and hand, is evident.

The paintings in this exhibition are all small, ranging from 10 x 8 inches to approximately 27 x 20 inches.  Prangenberg paints on a variety of surfaces: cardboard, wood, metal, and occasionally canvas, often allowing a portion of the foundation or ground to peak through the paint.  The artist uses brushstrokes, finger marks, varying densities of paint and intensities of color resulting in a vibrant tactile surface.
And to anchor the thickly impastoed surface, Prangenberg introduces either a simple, non-narrative geometric form, or a picture within a picture, a small area of intense color that contrasts to the larger painting.

Each painting can be categorized into one of five genres: Faces (in which the image of a face appears from the paint), Robinson (referring to castaway Robinson Crusoe), Bilder (images of ideas, e.g. a painting of “night” or “three huts”), Abstrakt (an abstract painting), or Tengu (supernatural creatures in Japanese folklore).  The artist disregards theory and does not favor a particular genre while he paints, but the theatricality of his process and exploration of the interaction of hand, eye, and material allows the characteristics to emerge that align each resulting painting with its genre.

Prangenberg has an extensive exhibition history in Europe and the UK; notably and most recently he had two solo shows: Norbert Prangenberg: Zeichnungen 1978-2004, in 2005 at the Staatliche Kunstalle, Karlsrude, Germany and Norbert Prangenberg: Retrospektive der Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Gouachen 1978-2004, at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum, Krefeld, Germany in 2004.  In the United States he exhibited at Hirschl & Adler Modern in 1986.

Norbert Prangenberg was born in Rommerskirchen-Nettesheim, Germany.  He undertook an apprenticeship working as a gold and silversmith with C. Kessler in Cologne and since 1993 he has held a professorship at the Art Academy in Munich.  The artist lives and works in Niederarnbach and Munich, Germany.
A catalogue with an essay by Walter Grasskamp will accompany the exhibition.  It includes 42 color images and is published by Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld/Leipzig.

Betty Cuningham Gallery