Peter Baader

Clear transparency and a perceptible search for space chracterise the painting of Peter Baader (born 1965). With the employ of contrasts, the combination of apparently antagonistic elements and the destruction and “repainting” the artworks of the alumnus of Nam June Paik enable to multiple associations. Some surfaces hinder the viewer to penetrate, other surfaces annoy. Instead of building shapes or determining different spaces he concentrates on using the entire sphere of development and action. He creates the illusion of an infinite space and breaks through the twodimensionality of his work of art to open a further dimension of space. www.peterbaader.de

(1) Spichern Höfe - historische Halle

Gabriel Dubois

Canadian born Gabriel Dubois (1981) typically employs in his collages graphic, material and abstract elements. His work is rooted in street art which clearly can be traced in his choice of old wooden groundings. This wood tells its own story and besides the use of writings and lines it works as independent fragment of collage amongst the tense relation of inside and outside as well as fragmentation and complementation.

(6) Glanzkinder

Jörg Eibelshäuser "SYSTEM ERROR"

“Your mind has a system error!” The protagonists in the paintings and installations of Jörg Eibelshäusers (1980) are torn with individuality and adaptation, appearance and reality, enjoying life and seeking a position in society. They are representatives for those who search their own way in a world of hard rules and given routines or those who already found it. It’s the isolation without nature and without human relations. “Game over. Insert coin! Push to reject...”

(7) Halle 15

Anna Genger "Broken Heart´s Tango for Two"

The organic and semi-abstract worlds of Anna Genger consist of mazy compositions, floral elements and gorgeous shapes. They reflect inner emotions like pain, sorrow, joy and yearning. Very important to the master student of the Royal College of Art, London is the materiality of pictures impressing the physical act of painting as essential aspect of perfected art work. www.upstairs-berlin.com

(11) IHK - Treppenhaus

Matthias Gephart "The artist is not petitioner a of the government"

Matthias Gephart (1972) visualises the contemporary attitude to life. His ambition is the enthusiasm for the new. He expresses this with spray cans, with the camera, and he experiences with Photoshop and Typography. “Without rank growth visual culture remains monotonous,” explains Gephart. He does not see himself as street artist who paints on canvas for the museum but he is rooted in the writing, a graphic discipline and his passion for over 20 years now. His sources of inspiration are motion, strange perspectives, layers, and leftovers of typographic traces, collections, friendship, love, heartsickness, and memories, women, journeys, readings, unintentional humour, especially in the yellow press, and in the conducts of politicians. www.disturbanity.com

(12) Rheinlandhalle

Der Herr und sein Knecht "Collaborations 2007"

Free associating, so called “doodling”, with different materials, media and techniques on paper enables the collective of artists “Master and servant” to emancipate street art. Elements of trivial and pop culture serve as source for quotations as well as an unintentionally found exhibition catalogue of the “Collaborations” from Warhol, Basquiat and Clemente. Working with these protagonists evoke parallels to their own work and resulted in an identification and fusion with the three art workers that should be taken with a pinch of salt. bines arranged time and sound architecture with real pebble ground and real time.

(19) L'Aristokrassie

Tarek Abu Hageb “Weapons” & “I go Goya”

The Swiss artist Tarek Abu Hageb (1972) seeks for new cross-border paths to implement or to employ ideas. He assigns his poly gravures, soldering iron on carpet, to the painting though they are drawn. The series called “Weapons” with its grounding coming from the VIP lounge from the Art Basel concentrates on the subject weapon on the one hand as collector’s item and on the other hand as object of power and misuse. The series “I go Goya” deals with the folly of persisting self-destruction, the artist converts to the here and now based on Goya’s etchings.

(17) Spichern Höfe - historische Halle

Li Haibin "Where is my mind?" & "I look for my mind for 12 days“

Haibin Li (1976), a native born Chinese, regards art as a way of life. So in “I look for my mind for twelve days”, he reflects own experiences in a kind of illustrative journal. The subject of his work “Where is my mind?” is the relation between communism and racism – shown on the basis of Mao quotes, photocopies of the Tiananmen-massacre, lyrics of the band “The Pixies” in Chinese, and dialogues taken from the movie “My Blueberry Nights” by director Wong Kar-Wei. His technique is mixed media – bamboo paper, leather, Indian ink, or even soy sauce – on canvas. www.lihaibinart.blogspot.com

(28) Fenz Kunstraum

Lauraunt Impeduglia"V.I.T.R.I.O.L"

Laurent Impeduglia (1974, Belgium) is an artist ambitious of construction. The scope of his art work reaches from funny illustrations and small sculptures to rugged oil paintings and installations. All those works have in common an obsessive relation to the act of construction and assembling. Bricks and tools as real modified objects or just drawings and paintings serve for building cheap castles, burning churches and collapsing igloos. The word “Vitriol” stands for the attempt to conclude from the construction of objects to the thought of self-reconstruction. www.impeduglia.com

(21) Spichern Höfe - historische Halle
 

R. J. Kirsch „Alter Ego“

The installation “Alter Ego” from R.J. Kirsch (1959) contrasts the conception of identity with the opportunities of electronic media. A room installation consists of up to 20 portraits installed in one row. The heads composed of single parts arise from the principle of phantom images. Found physiognomic fragments lay over the own portrait to generate new synthetic figurations that serve as template for conversion into paintings. In the presentation as series the phantom images condense to a panorama and establish a link between. www.r-j-kirsch.de

(22) IHK - Treppenhaus

Paolo Maggis „Torture“

In his paintings the Spaniard Paolo Maggis (1978) scrutinizes the dark side and vulnerability of men. Torture 1 is inspired by pictures from the war in Iraq and shows a prisoner of war being violated and humiliated. Torture 2 is about self-imposed bondage going together with self-destruction and self-humiliation. Both paintings attempt to provoke the viewer  to self-reflect his person, his individual story and destiny. www.paolo-maggis.com

(31) Fenz Kunstraum

Alexandra Medilanski

Alexandra Medilanski (1979) deconstructs the self-portrait as a certain category of art by sabotaging her own portrait and showing on her back view of a pictured person. She paints her individual environment and friends and this way her pictures, considered as part of a painted diary, almost get the character of a painted autobiography. Sometimes social situations like a party or visit are included. You will never see a face.

(32)Noni

Sébastien Plevoets

 
The Belgium painter Sébastien Plevoets (1980) presents large formated paintings showing personal draws, recent images from daily press and historical ones mixed together. „I bring together elements from different sources that finally build one image, to reveal some kind of a dream or nightmarish unrevealed world.

(40)IHK - Treppenhaus

Tanja Selzer

Tanja Selzers’ (1970) paintings are dedicated to the creation of reality and the political context behind it. From the daily information overloads of medial subjects she picks out pictures of war or man-made catastrophes. She modifies the pictures by help of composition, colour shifting and ease of the painting job in order to appear in a cloak of mostly idyllic countryside. Her method of shifting and alienating seems to follow the maxim of Sergei M. Eisenstein: “Colour starts where it will not follow natural colouring.” Therefore Tanja Selzer’s catastrophes in clouded magenta, bright pink, stained purple or light blue. Only the second view enables to draw conclusions to reality where in fact the content is located. www.tanjaselzer.de

(44) Spichern Höfe - historische Halle

Elena Steiner

The large sized realistic paintings of Elena Steiner exert a certain pull to the contemplator. People and their social environment are the central subject in the art works of the Czech by birth who actually lives in Vienna. However not the protagonists of our today’s lifestyle society occupy the artist but the “Common People” of our everyday life with different backgrounds do. She poses the question what kind of effect isolation, anonymity, estrangement or influence of the mass-media has on people. And she transforms those subjects into deep going pictures that should be understood usually subtle and sometimes with a twinkle in her eye. www.elenasteiner.at

(45) The New Yorker | Hotel

Kirsten van den Bogaard "Where is my mind"

In our visual world there is not much space between sensation and catastrophe for the everyday moment. Kirsten van den Bogaard observes, collects, and documents such human moments. Her painting works as filter and the glossy ground coat Dibond serves as mirror for the environment. The gained essence exhibits real life. That applies to the captured situation as well as to the reflection of the contemplator. “Where is my mind?” can be considered as formula than as question, it’s a conception of the steady struggle with oneself for the most impressive portrayal of the own message. www.vandenbogaard.blogspot.com

(49) Rheinlandhalle