December 31st 2020

A WALK IN MY LIBRARY:
DECEMBER 31, 2020
JASON BUTLER'S EXHIBITION
Meyer Schapiro, “Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist and Society

December 18th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
LIOR GALL, BRUSSELS, 2020

December 11th 2020

HIGHLIGHT:
LOVE LETTERS
A new participative project by artist Koen Vanmechelen

December 4th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
LINDA KARSHAN AND THE BROOKLYN RAIL

November 27th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
NOVEMBER 2020, LINDA KARSHAN
The Covid Conversation, A New Film

November 6th 2020

A WALK IN MY LIBRARY:
PARIS, NOV. 6, 2020
ABËTËI by Ishmael Fiifi Annobil

October 20th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
MATHILDE BRETILLOT
Designs new offices for Parfums de Marly, Paris

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October 12th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
BERLIN STUDIO VISIT - LUKAS HOFFMANN

October 7th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
BERLIN

September 24th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
GALERIE NÄCHST ST. STEPHAN ROSEMARIE SCHWARZWÄLDER, VIENNA
Friederike Mayröcker, Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist - until 10 Oct
Schutzgeister/Guardian Spirits

September 9th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
JSVCPROJECTS AND KOEN VANMECHELEN
The Battery Channel Podcast

September 1st 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
ARTISTS IN THE STUDIO, JERSEY

August 25th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
MANIFEST OF THE TRUE

August 18th 2020

A WALK IN MY LIBRARY:
3 LOVE POEMS IN THE SUMMER

August 11th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
SUMMER NEWS

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August 4th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
ROD MENGHAM,
Awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets

July 28th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
JILL SILVERMAN VAN COENEGRACHTS RECOMMENDS

July 21st 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
LINDA KARSHAN
Studio visit

July 14th 2020

BEHIND THE SCENES:
STEFANO CIGADA,
"Frammenti" at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere

January 2nd 2020

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020!

all posts title image
Till Gerhard, “Filz”, 2020, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 190 x 150 cm

BEHIND THE SCENES:
BERLIN

October 7th 2020

Part I

Gallery weekend

11, 12 September, 2020

Everything takes longer now, including the decision to fly to Berlin after so many months staying home. Last year spent real time there with our collaborative Art & Language exhibition at Galerie Michael Janssen; I missed my friends, artists and colleagues. It seemed a moment to celebrate the last project MJ would mount in this great storefront gallery I love. They just now moved to offices down the block until a new gallery space is found.

Super fresh painting. Till Gerhard, We’re all like Mirrors, dreamy and exciting surprises galore. Not the kind I usually embrace, but suddenly, in this time, having spent months looking at art only in my library and on my laptop, the sheer delight of his unique convergences, color and narrative, wicked and magical at the same time; partially recognizable scenes, photo albums from long ago family outings, or odd Scandi Noir television moments. His taut ambivalence between innocence and destruction drives their pictorial nature into something compelling.

Till Gerhard, “Lagune”, 2020, Oil and acrylic on cotton, 190 x 150 cm

Acid colors, transparent veils over quasi-photographic imagery either come in or out of focus. Sometimes the subjects are directly in your line of vision, walking at you, staring at us blindly. What are they doing? Something unsettles the eye and sets it deep into the foreground looking for clues.

Till Gerhard, “We‘re all like Mirrors”, 2020, Oil and acrylic on cotton, 210 x 280 cm

Groups of children, or adults caught in another reality where something has just happened or is about to. His night scenes of lovers in a lake hover under psychedelic skies. Washes of color across Gerhard’s work are high voltage and filmic. His subjects dissolve in and out of focus; painterly prisons of layered color like camouflage keep us from getting too near what is going on. But he makes me want to see, keeping my eye fixed on this unsettled territory. Idiosyncratic voyeurism couched in radical painting. Keep looking.

Installation view
Hanging works
Hanging works

PART II

Customary dinner outside at Paris Bar the night before the opening of Till Gerhard’s show. I stay around the corner always at the Savoy, a habit since 1997 when Thomas Schulte booked me there in the Marlene Dietrich suite for 75DM; we shared a booth at an early edition of Berlin Art Fair. I was MD at LISSON then, wanted a satellite in Berlin. Walking in Charlottenburg I always felt oddly at home. Many dinners and parties always at Paris Bar. Maybe then still homesick for the New York art world dinners at Barocco in Tribeca, a place where there were always people you knew, at the bar, at a table.

After, Paris bar
After, Paris bar

Paris Bar is this, like the Kunsthalle in Basel, or the Kronenhalle in Zurich a place you can go alone and always fit in; the waiters are the same, the menu is the same, the art on the walls and reverence for artists makes it feel like an extension of the gallery or artists studio. So this year after months at home, sitting with Till and Michael outside for dinner, like a genuine holiday yet also an extension of the last time. Nerves taut the night before an opening. The show is up, the work lives or dies on its merits. Few people say anything about how hard this feels. Even for a gallerist who hopes to place the works well. Expectations run high, fear mounts higher. Without a word you finish the installation, and leave the gallery looking for relief.

After, Paris bar

Dinner is my first meeting with Till Gerhard, lanky tallness and physical calm; I am surprised after hours with his fiery, edgy, nervy paintings, feeling dangerous. He is soft-spoken and thoughtful. Easy going, experienced, one would say, artist entering mid-career. His fourth show at the gallery with a place in the German art scene, but is new to me. I try to contextualize his work in a neighborhood with artists I once worked with like Daniel Richter and Jules de Balincourt. He is near but still quite far his piercing melodramas embrace an oddness you cannot decipher.