APPROPRIATION ART

“Was ist dieses kleine bisschen Mehr?”

von Christiane Fricke

Sherrie Levine macht freche Kopien nach Fotografien von August Sander. Die Kölner Galeristen Rafael Jablonka und Priska Pasquer konfrontieren die Werke der beiden Künstler. Was Levine und Sander je Eigenes zu erzählen haben, erschließt sich nur dem aufmerksamen Betrachter.

Köln„Voor beeldende kunst moet je kunnen kijken“. Der Satz ist so einfach und gut, dass man ihn nicht vergisst. Formuliert hat ihn vor rund vier Jahrzehnten der niederländische Künstler Jan Dibbets. Jetzt fällt er einem wieder ein. Anlass sind die auf den ersten Blick frechen Kopien von Fotografien August Sanders durch Sherrie Levine. Die amerikanische Künstlerin, Jahrgang 1947, befasst sich seit mehr als 30 Jahren mit der Aneignung vorbildlicher Werke der Fotokunst; eine Form künstlerischer Auseinandersetzung, die in die Kunstgeschichte als „Appropriation Art“ eingegangen ist.

Sherrie Levine "After August Sander", 2011, courtesy Jablonka Pasquer Projects

Zu besichtigen ist Levines neue Serie bei Jablonka Pasquer Projects in Köln. Die Ausstellung hat das Zeug zum Lehrstück. Denn Rafael Jablonka und Priska Pasquer nutzen darüber hinaus ihre eigenen Galerieräume, um den authentischen Bildern August Sanders (1876-1964) und weiteren Werken Levines zum Auftritt zu verhelfen. So kann der aufmerksame Betrachter vergleichen und im Sinne von Dibbets das „Kijken“ bzw. „Sehen“ lernen.

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Japan 4
Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, Shomei Tomatsu
@ Jablonka Pasquer Projects
Vernissage: Friday, September 9, 6pm – 10pm
Exhibition: September 10 – October 29,  2011
Tue – Fri 3pm – 6pm, Sa 12pm – 4pm
Lindenstr. 19, 50674 Cologne
moc.liamgnull@stcejorpreuqsapaknolbaj

Daido Moriyama
@ Galerie Priska Pasquer
Vernissage: Friday, September 9, 6pm – 10pm
Exhibition: September 10 – October 29, 2011
Tue – Fri 11am – 6pm, Sat 11am – 4pm

Galerie Priska Pasquer and Jablonka Galerie are delighted to be embarking on a new partnership for the 2011 autumn season. At Lindenstr. 19, Jablonka Pasquer Projects is presenting the exhibition:

Japan 4
Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, Shomei Tomatsu

The exhibition centrally features four Japanese photographers whose work has significantly influenced the medium both within Japan and internationally.

Nobuyoshi Araki: Untitled (from “Mythology”), 2001
© Nobuyoshi Araki, courtesy Jablonka Galerie, Cologne

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Damian Zimmermann writes about our exhibition “Lieko Shiga – Canary”

Of Swarms of Flies and other Trepidations
- These are strange surreal photographs, which are currently exhibited at Galerie Priska Pasquer. People floating, a  swarm of insects in front of, or a light explosion on their face, or they are reclining on blue tarp under almost menacing cherry trees. The Japanese photographer Lieko Shiga had distributed questionaires to people asking them for the “brightest” or “darkest” places they know. The findings were a mixture of personal reports, local myths, memories, emotions and experiences. They result in fantasic  and almost always irritating-dramatic scenarios, which can cause trepidations to the Western viewer too, while they are beautiful at the same time. [...]

Kölner Stadtanzeiger, June 17, 2011

The French newspaper published five interviews with Japanese artists on the earthquake:

“One month after the earthquake – five Japanese artists give account”, Le Figaro, April 4, 2011

SHOMEI TOMATSU
PHOTOGRAPHE

Born in 1930, he is known for his series on Nagasaki ten years after the bombing of the city in 1945.

“Civilization went too fast”

“On March 11th, I was in Okinawa, quite far from the north and from the disaster. I watched some of the images of the disaster on TV. I did not want to look at the cascades of images. The reality is far more difficult than the mere visions of these sunken villages. It is impossible to translate such a drama into words. The fact that there are so many victims is in itself a turning point for Japan. Nature’s force, incredible, reminds mankind of the great damage it has inflicted upon it. It is quite different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it was a bomb. In Nagasaki, I had seen and followed all these victims (Nagasaki and Scars series). This time, radioactivity spreads in an invisible, unpalpable way, a different kind of menace, less spectacular, slower. It is the defeat of Sciences loosing control, the defeat of the civilization that went too fast, the eye opener of our reliance on nuclear energy. What can we do? It might be wise to consider getting rid of these plants, even if I can offer no other scientific or concrete solution in return.

Nuclear electricity was perceived as a progress for civilization. The problem with scientific discoveries is that they are limitless.”

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AIPAD Photography Show New York
By Karen Rosenberg

AIPAD
March 17-20, 2011
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue, at 67th Street

Art fairs can seem as if they were outside of history, congested labyrinths that confuse time and place. That’s not often the case with the annual Association of International Photography Art Dealers show, where photojournalism is exhibited alongside artier and more experimental work.

This year’s edition is especially, sometimes painfully, current, as many exhibitors have brought work by Japanese artists. In the case of the Cologne gallery Priska Pasquer, plans were already in the works for a booth of pictures by Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu and others before the earthquake and tsunami hit.

Mr. Tomatsu is well known for his images of post-atomic Hiroshima and Nagasaki; his shiver-inducing 1961 shot of a bottle melted by the blast is here, along with an image of a wristwatch frozen at 11:02, Aug. 9, 1945. Proceeds from the sale of photographs by a younger artist, Lieko Shiga, will be donated to relief efforts in Japan.

….
Full article here

Priska Pasquer & Ilan Engel present

KEN KITANO
Photographs

Galerie Priska Pasquer @Ilan Engel Gallery
77, rue des Archives
75003 Paris

February 9 – March 2, 2011
Tuesday – Saturday
2 pm – 7 pm and by appointment

Priska Pasquer and Ilan Engel are pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Ken Kitano in France. The exhibition features a selection of works from his series ‘Our Face’, ‘One Day’ and ‘Flow and Fusion’.

Ken Kitano, who was born in 1968, has been working on the ‘Our Face’ project since 1999. Beginning in his native Japan, he portrays members of social groups, associations, clubs or professions – for instance lawyers, athletes or ricksha pullers.

A conceptual approach such as this was pioneered by August Sander, whose Weimar typology ‘Face of our Time’ was published back in 1929. Unlike Sander, however, Ken Kitano’s work does not depict individuals belonging to a group, but rather compresses portraits of a group into a single print, in which the portraits (up to several dozen individual shots) are copied upon one another, layer upon layer.
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Exposition présentée du 29 janvier au 15 mai 2011:

August Sander compte parmi les grands photographes du XXe siècle, dont l’influence sur nombre de photographes et artistes contemporains reste aujourd’hui très présente.
« La nature de la photographie dans son ensemble est documentaire » déclarait-il en 1931 au cours d’une de ses conférences radiophoniques. Cette phrase allait rester au cœur de sa conception du travail durant toute sa carrière.
Autour de ces trois thèmes : portraits, paysages et architecture, l’exposition regroupera 120 images dont une partie en tirages d’époque et proposera ainsi au visiteur un panorama représentatif du travail artistique de ce grand photographe. Elle constitue un ensemble exceptionnel que nous sommes heureux de pouvoir présenter pour la première fois au public de la région.

L’exposition a été conçue par Gerd Sander, petit-fils d’August Sander, et organisée en collaboration avec la Galerie Priska Pasquer, à Cologne et le Théâtre de la Photographie et de l’Image Charles Nègre.

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The first presention of our exhibition Ken Kitano “Our Face” in Germany received very positive reviews at the Koelner Stadtanzeiger and the Koelnische Rundschau:

Thomas Linden writes in the Koelnische Rundschau, Dec. 30, 2011:

Hidden Smiles
Sophisticated Portrait Collages at Galerie Priska Pasquer
[....]
The result [of the multi layered portraits] is permeated by a ghostly realism. Usually portraits have – in contrary to all other photographic genres – the characteristic that they meet our gaze. We are being watched, but never with such a hypnotic intensity like in the image of Ken Kitano.
[...]

—-

Damian Zimmerman writes in the Koelner Stadtanzeiger, Jan. 6, 2011:

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Our exhibition “Rinko Kawauchi – A Glimmer in Silence” was reviewed in the Koelner Stadtanzeiger, in the WDR3 radio and mentioned in the art market section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

Kölner Stadtanzeiger, review by Damian Zimmermann:

Menacing Beauty

The Japanese Rinko Kawauchi is the best known women photographer of her country – with her images she has aquired an independent position apart of the major photographers Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. Since the simultaneously publication of three photobooks in 2001 she is  considers as a star. Among the published books was the legendary book “Utatane” wich means “Nap”: with her wide-awake gift to observe the everyday life and the seemingly dozy eye through the camera she is showing poetic moments inbetween melancholy and death, light and infinity.

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Rinko Kawauchi - ”the eyes, the ears”
Kunstverein Augsburg

Vernissage
Sunday Oct. 17, 11:30 am

Opening address by Christian Thoener
Introduction by Ferdinand Brueggemann

Exhibition
October 17 – December 19, 2010
Holbeinhaus, Vorderer Lech 20
86150 Augsburg

With works from the series
“Utatane”, 2001
“Aila”, 2004
“the eyes, the ears”,  2005
As slide show: “Cui Cui”, 2005

Supported by Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne