Berlin Calling

In the summer month of August, Galerie Kornfeld is happy to present the exhibition Berlin Calling: Works and Paper, a selection of works with and on paper. In close collaboration with the Berlin artist Philip Grözinger, 16 contemporary artists – invited by Grözinger – will show works that express the diversity and variety of the medium of paper in striking fashion.

This involves drawing, painting and watercolouring, folding, gluing and collaging. Figuration is juxtaposed with abstraction, expression with introspection, plenitude with emptiness, image with text, fleeting sketches with pictorial compositions. Small formats are contrasted with larger works that branch out into room installations. Recourse to the medium’s centuries-old tradition is supplemented by artistic concepts that elicit completely new facets from paper.

In addition to the paper medium, the works on display share other commonalities: the intimacy of the scenes by British artist Tom Anholt, who explores the closeness of mother and child in his formally complex figurative watercolours, resonates in both the work of Armin Boehm and the gouaches of British artist Andrew Salgado, who depicts moments of togetherness in rich colours.

Completely different images of human beings can be found in the works of Philip Grözinger, Sebastiaan Schlicher or Farshad Farzankia: the almost childlike expressiveness in Grözinger and Farzankia, as well as the references to art brut in Schlicher celebrate an apparent naivety that still knows exactly what it wants.

Artistic expressivity also characterizes the works of Samuel Bassett and Tina Schwarz, who, like Robert Fry, venture to explore the depths of the soul –, Fry’s etchings, however, are distinguished less by expression than by precision and introspection.

Franziska Klotz’s figure paintings and the landscapes of Fritz Bornstück, whose works show lost paradises in rich colours, are in turn characterised by a contemporary examination of centuries-old painterly traditions.

Hannah Dougherty’s virtuoso line drawings are arranged in collage-like sheets assembled into installations that break free from the wall and spread into the room. The collage technique can also be found in the works of Michelle Jezierski and Manfred Peckl, which nonetheless differ in both subject and motif.

Akin to Robert Fry in his etchings, the painter Clemens Krauss, in his works on paper, searches for an artistic form of expression that can exist independently alongside his painting: his photographs show mysterious scenes from his video films, targeting the viewer’s imagination.

Joachim Stracke’s series “Jukebox” is analogue in a double sense: using mixed media, he creates rectangular works that resemble paper sleeves containing vinyl singles. Trompe l'œil effects reproduce an old-fashioned sound carrier in the medium of drawing, superimposed with abstract forms.

Finally, in Kristian Touborg's work, digital techniques are combined with classical craftsmanship – his works bring together what does not belong together, managing to create a new whole.

Added are some sculptures – with glass and alabaster in Susanne Roewer's works, with ceramics in the works of Felix Bornstück.

Artists: Tom Anholt, Samuel Bassett, Armin Boehm, Fritz Bornstück, Hannah Dougherty, Farshad Farzankia, Robert Fry, Philip Grözinger, Michelle Jezierski, Franziska Klotz, Clemens Krauss, Manfred Peckl, Susanne Roewer, Andrew Salgado, Sebastiaan Schlicher, Tina Schwarz, Joachim Stracke, Kristian Touborg.

In times of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Co., where we naturally move in virtual worlds and digital spaces, the exhibition Berlin Calling focuses on the analogue. The variety of paper types, as well as the artistic techniques and modes of expression engender haptic, manual sensations that can still be elicited from the ancient medium of paper today. Hence our slogan for the summer month of August: “Feel and experience!”