Made Me Think of You/It's More Like a Memory

Let's face the music and dance

Harpers Bazaar Germany

October Print Issue , 2019

Feuer Fangen

Kunst und Liebe- entweder es funkt oder nicht. Bazaar's radikal subjektive Auswahl an jungen KünstlerInnen, deren Werke der Anfang einer Leidenschaft werden könnten.

Office Magazine NYC

September 13, 2019

The Art of Becoming

Ahead of Berlin Art Week, office caught up with five faces of Berlin’s art scene: Theresa Volpp, Marius Glauer, Clara Brender, Robert Grunenberg and Jeewi Lee. We followed and photographed them throughout the city at the spots that matter to them most. Get to know more about the artists below.

Theresa Volpp is a painter exploring the perception of painting itself, having had a background with Graffiti. She studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Katharina Grosse. Volpp is currently working on her new exhibition with painters Clare Price and Goia Mujalli, opening in London in November.

http://officemagazine.net/art-becoming

Trafo Gallery, Praha

Berlin Praha Barter

Vystavující: Christian August, Jim Avignon, Hendrik Czakainski, Marion Jdanoff, Johannes Mundinger, Stohead, Sebas Velasco, Theresa Volpp, Fabian Warnsing, Lars Wunderlich

Kurátor: Pascal Feucher

After the first exhibition, titled “Praha Berlin Barter” (with the Czech artists by Trafo Gallery during March/April 2019) which was hosted by Urban Spree in Berlin, the gallery is this time being hosted by Trafo Gallery in Prague in a new group exhibition called “Berlin Praha Barter”.

The artists are representative of the new Berlin scene that emerged since the Fall of the Wall, starting with the precursor – Jim Avignon – quite known for his painted decors of many of the Berlin squatted clubs of the early 90’s and large historic murals (East Side Gallery) and whose remixed cubist/pop art/Neue Sachlichkeit aesthetics are iconic of the Berlin art scene.

Going along the figurative trail, Marion Jdanoff develops a highly poetic and fairytale-like universe, fueled with middle age tales, strange characters, fabled animals in a rich palette of colors. Fabian Warnsing paints large-sized canvases in a faux-naïf style, creating still life paintings, urban landscapes and everyday scenes.

The graphite drawings of Lars Wunderlich are part of a series from 2017 titled “East German Realities”, whereby the artist applies his process of distortion and glitches to scenes witnessed in the Eastern parts of Germany where nationalism is still a vivid reality. Sebas Velasco explores the remnants of the Eastern bloc in a series of oil paintings and drawings based on scenes from Yugoslavia and elsewhere, Plattenbau, old cars, graffiti, and neon hotel signs. Going further, Hendrik Czakainski creates 3D large-scale post-architectural panels which are radical anatomical explorations of the urban body. His works are impressive, immersive, chaotic urban scenes captured from above, on a bird’s eye view perspective.

Besides figurative and architecture-inspired works, a strong line at Urban Spree has always been “post-graffiti abstraction”, i.e. using the codes, techniques, roots, flow and philosophy of graffiti, where the letter becomes an abstraction, a substance.

While Stohead is closer in some instances to the true form of the letter (calligraphy, handstyle, overwriting), he has always experimented beyond it, trying to deconstruct and dissolve the Letter in a post-graffiti approach. Theresa Volpp’s practice is more focused on the very subject of abstract art and bears only a faint distance to graffiti, although some form of automatic writing exists in her work, in a pre-graffiti way, as if abstract art is trying to reconnect with a certain flow but before the invention of graffiti..
Christian August creates multiple layers of grey colors by erasing, scratching, repainting, and finally achieving a wall texture (in the scratchy meaning of Dubuffet and Brassaï in the early 20th century), then completing his work by a stunning dash of ultramarine color, the artist’s persistent signature.
Johannes Mundinger has also strong roots in wall painting and creates delicate abstract works in subdued tones, large shapes and blocs, stunning and contemplative abstract landscapes.

Oscillating between abstract and figurative art, Berlin Praha Barter shows a diversity of approaches and styles, seemingly loosely connected but united by an undercurrent practice of wall painting and shared values.

Urban Spree Galerie was created in Berlin-Friedrichshain in 2012 as a 400 sqm “artist-run” space with the objective of discovering and promoting the emerging international wave of post-graffiti painters and artists, with a strong focus on local talents.

The gallery is an essential part of Urban Spree, a 1.700 sqm independent multi-cultural complex comprising a Biergarten, a concert room, a bookshop, 5 artist studios, a screen printing studio, itself set in a 70.000 sqm postindustrial creative compound in the heart of Berlin (R.A.W.).

The gallery benefits from its large urban grassroots ecosystem and offers its invited artists an ideal space for experimentation through ambitious on-site residencies and monthly exhibitions that usually involve painting the outside walls of the compound.

It is armed with these values of generosity and openness, shared with Trafo Gallery, that we together decided to initiate a gallery exchange.

https://trafogallery.cz/vystava/berlin-praha-barter/

Sleek Magazine

January 11, 2019

7 emerging Berlin artists you need to know in 2019

You don’t need us to tell you that Berlin is something of a Mecca when it comes to attracting emerging and underground artists. Every year, young artists flock to the city in their droves in search of bright studio spaces, rustic artist abodes, cheap beer and döner, and of course, a nightlife just ripe for exhibition opening tales of excess. And unlike its counterparts in London, Paris or New York, the art scene here is also relatively accessible due to state-funded galleries and a plethora of independent projects spaces that stud the city from Wedding to Weserstraße. As we start a new year, we take a look at some of the most promising artists making waves in the German capital — from those who are just shy of making their big breakthrough to those bubbling beneath the surface. 

Theresa Volpp is a recent graduate from the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and studied under the renowned painter, Katharina Grosse. We came across her work at Schaufenster Gallery in the group show, Dirty Voyage, in 2018, where her abstract approach to painting caught our eye. Volpp’s work explores how a canvas might be “a limiting and art historically-loaded, medium” but how it can articulate something nonverbal and complex at the same time.

https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/emerging-berlin-artists/

Scrims and Blurs

Dirty Voyage

Kunstverein Lippe

Klasse Katharina Grosse stellt aus

Malerei

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

AKADEMIE [Arbeitstitel]

2025

Elephant and Castle

LibraryLondon

The Spiral

Dalson Printhouse Gallery

Foreign Surface

Goldsmiths
University of London

Opening:
14th of July 2016, 6-9 pm

Exhibition:
14th-18th of July 2016

Opening times:
Fr, Sat, Mo 10 am - 7 pm,
Sun 10 am - 4 pm

Goldsmiths MFA Show

Location: Goldsmiths Ben Pimlot Building, Laurie Grove Baths & Richard Hoggart Building. Exhibition is open for everyone.

Westwerk Hamburg

Opening:
31st of March 2016, 7 pm

Exhibition:
1st-17th of April 2016

Opening times:
Tue-Fr 4-7 pm,
Sat 12-7 pm,
Sun 1-4 pm

No Lifeguard On Duty

“There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real.  It was important. […] Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.”

“No Lifeguard on Duty” is a group exhibition focusing on the tension that lies between binaries. Exploring the concept of demarcation (and alternatively, what might or might not occur in its absence), the project invites eight London-based artists to engage with this theme through painting, installation, and video works.

The traditional image of the lifeguard conjures a sense of safety and well-being, and creates a boundary and set of rules. Therefore, the phrase “No Lifeguard on Duty” immediately connotes the opposite, suggesting possible danger or disorder. Here, a duality is established. The absence of a lifeguard blurs otherwise delineated borders and pushes the realm of limitations into a grey territory: safety may be lost, but a certain freedom is gained. The exhibition pays attention to the lines of demarcation – that which separate – and the indefiniteness and incertitude that the space between these lines manifest.

For example, Olivia Hernaïz addresses the stark divide between political parties, doing so in a playful manner by posing semi-childlike questions to leaders of different prominent parties. Her colorful cushions and (what appears to be a) light-hearted approach counter the heavy-handedness of the current political climate.

Pauline Batista’s work questions the difference between reality and myth, or rather, science and intuition and asks the viewer which might be more valid in reflecting upon the human condition. Taking oil and paint to create layers on a glass surface, Batista then projects scenes from the film Apocalypse Now through the glass to ultimately create a blurry, numbed image of violence.

Continuing in this meditation on human nature, Andrea Williamson uses celebrity and pop culture to evoke feelings of empathy and affection. Three iconic women – Lindsay Lohan, Oprah Winfrey, and Pema Chodron – have been morphed by the artist to express relations of care and compassion between them, replacing the stereotypical and judgemental gaze that we so often give. Williamson’s endeavour is a reversal of sensibility; not to seduce the viewer but to create a harmonious hybrid entity intended to ‘rescue the positive affections of love and spirituality from the seemingly superficial.’

Theresa Volpp’s paintings are the product of physical engagement. Glossy paints are poured over canvases that lay on the floor before Volpp shakes them to combine colors. In this way there is no direct effect on the emergence of the surface. The artist produces a loss of control, that reveals itself in the negation of the artists own signature. The implication is an interrogation of boundaries running between the artist’s subject and the object. While visually, the differentiation between colors is fairly evident, an alternative dichotomy is at work-between intentional bodily movements and spontaneity.

In a similar vein to Volpp’s merging of forms, James Clarke creates an overlap of imagery in his work, Torus (London–Hamburg). Influenced by the original handiwork of English World War II mapmakers at Hughenden Manor, Clarke employed their map of Hamburg as a springboard for his seemingly repetitive patterns. Together, these four paintings imbue one with a feeling of movement between borders whilst also serving as a nod to the histories of both London – the artist’s homebase – and Hamburg.

Frederic Klein examines the impact of the natural world upon the individual, rendering his experiences of exploring rugged (and often threatening) landscapes to the canvas. Klein routinely isolates himself in the wilderness, oftentimes for a number of days, allowing for the extreme conditions of his ventures act as a catalyst for his practice. The artist utilizes “subtitles” in his paintings, thus implying a distance exists between the artist and viewer that requires translation.

Similarly, the notion of distance is noticed in the video work of Francis Almendárez. The artist explores spatial dislocation in the context of deterritorialized post-modernity. He seeks the truth among those trampled underfoot by history: refugees herded into camps, women victimized by a brutal patriarchal society, indigenous people relocated and stripped of their identity – in other words, the survivors.

In her series of six paintings, titled “Où est le bec?”, Ingrid Berthon-Moine displays six simplistic figures of the male body, each in a different state of sexual arousement. Though all hang at different heights, the works are aligned along the tips of the erect penises. The title is the phonetic pronunciation of the surname of French novelist Michel Houellebecq, whose characters are regularly fatigued and hopeless. For Berthon-Moine, this depression points to the greater repercussions of capitalism: eventually, our individualism and liberalism provoke an internal tension between indulging limitless gratification, or perhaps, growing weary of constant desire.

Tony Tremlett and Caroline Elbaor