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Matts Leiderstam, Returned, Hampstead Heath, 1997, C-print, 40.5 x 55.5 cm | | |
Matts Leiderstam - Nachbild
14.09. - 18.11.2007
Opening: Thursday 13 September, 7:00 p.m.
Press conference: 12 September, 11 a.m.
Nachbild (After Image) is the first solo exhibition of the Swedish artist Matts Leiderstam in Germany. Alongside new works especially created for this exhibition, the Kunstverein is presenting various work groups which Leiderstam has been continuously expanding since the end of the nineteen-nineties - mostly with a direct relation to the exhibition site. Thus the new works for Nachbild grew out of his response to the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, from which the corresponding paintings have been borrowed for the duration of the exhibition.
Leiderstam is interested in the repressed aspects of historical pictures, which he detaches from their normative context within collections or archives and investigates from a contemporary point of view. He visits the repositories and collections of museums, and he explores the provenance and itineraries of the pictures which capture his attention. Arising out of these investigations and site-specific approaches are work complexes which are often expanded year after year and are dedicated to themes such as the educational journeys of the "Grand Tour" or the grammar of a perspective onto art. Here the artist is in no way concerned with an uncritical transfer of cultural-historical knowledge, but instead with an opening up of those alternative perspectives onto pictures which are not taken into consideration in a classical point of view. One of these perspectives involves erotic codes of art, which Leiderstam detects in the gestures, gazes and scenes of the paintings, and which customarily remain unnoticed by the viewer. With the help of visual media such as slide projections and computer images, optical instruments such as magnifying glasses, and various techniques of reproduction such as self-painted copies or photographs, Leiderstam scrutinizes the pictures right down to their very core of their essence. In this way, his work "opens" the historical storehouse of pictures through minimal optical interventions and frees them from culturally induced, interpretive patterns, in order to involve the viewer in the dynamic vividness of seeing and being seen.
For our calendar of events and further informations about the exhibitions please visit our homepage www.badischer-kunstverein.de . |
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