Akinci

Amsterdam Drawing

18 - 21 Sep 2014

AMSTERDAM DRAWING
Roger Cremers / Gluklya / Charlotte Schleiffert / Albrecht Schnider
18 - 21 September 2014

Roger Cremers (1972 Susteren, Netherlands) makes lavish use of familiar historical images, such as photos and pictures from old books, which emphasise our striving towards progress. As a romantic, however, Cremers finds that reality presents itself in myths and apparitions, and he adds new ones. The act of thinking creates the forms. At Amsterdam Drawing Cremers presents a selection of recent drawings around the theme progress and crisis which go hand in hand when contemplating events of the past 50 years.

Cremers studied at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Maastricht and at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (1997). He has exhibited his work at the Tate Modern in a project by Meshac Gaba (2013), Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam (2010), Galerie van Wijngaarden Hakkens, Amsterdam (2006), the Stadsgalerij Heerlen (2001), Domaine de Kerguehennec (1998/99), Bonnefantenmuseum (1997), De Appel (1997) and participated in group exhibitions at GEM, den Haag (2005), Bregenzer Kunstverein (2005), the Sharjah Biennial (2003), Documenta 11, Kassel with Meshac Gaba (2002), and the Tate Modern, London (2001). Cremers’ work is in various collections in the Netherlands and other countries, including ABN Amro, the former Peter Stuyvesant collection and private collections.

Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) born in Leningrad, lives and works in St. Petersburg and Amsterdam. Shortly after graduating from the Mukhina Academy of Art and Design, she became a co-founder of an artist collective The Factory of Found Clothes which uses installation, performance, video, text and ‘Social Research’ to illustrate the concept of “fragile” – relationships between internal and external and private and public. In 2002, FFC wrote their manifesto: “The place of the artist is at the side of the weak”.

Gluklya works within different collective and re-search projects combining performance, environmental works, situationist action, video and direct contact. Her main focus is working with women and minority groups (migrants, unemployed people, pensioners etc.) in Russia and recently in other countries which results in performances, actions and films. At Amsterdam Drawing we are showing a selection of drawings and sketches around her ideas and models for uniting groups of people in order to create a better world.

Gluklya’s work has been exhibited in Russia and other countries, including at the Museum Arnhem (2014), MOMMA, Moscow (2013), MUMOK Vienna (2012), Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden (2011), Shedhalle Zurich, CH (2011), SMART Project Space Amsterdam (2011), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2011), Kunsthalle Vienna (2011), ICA London (2010), National Center for Cont. Art, Moscow (2006).

In 2014 Gluklya won the prestigious Joseph Brodsky Prize.

Both Albrecht Schnider’s precise abstract paintings and sculptural objects take as their source the delicate explorations of shifting planes and geometric forms found in the artist’s drawings.

Though the artist’s paintings demonstrate a restrained elegance, their source drawings, swiftly sketched at the end of each day in the studio, are products of a spontaneous, intuitive process. While many of these drawings remain simply exercises, never emerging from their sketchbook, others are singled out by the artist for further exploration. Their oppositions of line and surface, presence and absence, are distilled and translated into the larger, more rigid compositions of Schnider’s paintings. When we look at Albrecht Schnider’s figurative and abstract drawings and paintings, they are reminiscent of things that lie behind us; they point to the void and they prefigure something new. Albrecht Schnider (1958, Luzern) is one of the most idiosyncratic painters at work. This is due not so much to his subjects, which comprise the traditional genres of art history such as landscape, figurative painting and still life as well as abstract works. It is more on account of the individual and highly distinctive attitude and direction he follows in terms of both form and content.

Albrecht Schnider, born 1958 in Luzern, CH, lives in Berlin. He has recently had exhibitions at Helmhaus Zurich (2014), Kunsthalle Bremen (2012), Kunstmuseum Solothurn (2011), Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2011), Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2011), Museum Wiesbaden (2011) and others more.
Schnider is being represented by Bob van Orsow in Zurich, Thomas Schulte in Berlin, Marc Jancou Contemporary in New York and AKINCI in Amsterdam.

Charlotte Schleiffert (Tilburg, 1967) dares to take on heavy themes, yet often in a very elegant manner. This is certainly the case with her sparsely painted works set on white backgrounds in which she deals with such subjects as prostitution, power and subjection in an almost humoristic fashion. In contrast, her larger drawings have the opposite visual impact. These are thickly layered and daubed with pastels and acrylics. In her drawings, Schleiffert comments on images that she encounters in the media. Her figures also take on an androgynous form. Women presenting themselves provocatively to the onlooker have characteristics reminiscent of pin-ups or models, yet surprisingly are portrayed with men's faces, or muscled legs and arms. At Amsterdam Drawing Schleiffert presents her recent monumental drawing ‘Devil Masquarade’, showing her ability to fuse painterly elements with ideas about style, patterns and hybrid forms between the humans and animal force.

Schleiffert trained at Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem (1990-1992). She had solo exhibitions several times at AKINCI, at Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp (2008), Barbara Gross Munich,Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, ID (2013), Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands (2011), Kunstverein Glückstadt, Germany (2006), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2004), Chinese European Art Centre, Xiamen (2003). She participated in group exhibitions at Rebelle Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem (2009), Cultural Center Montehermoso (2008) and several times at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Schleiffert is among the selected artists filmed for the project Dutch Masters of the 21st Century.
 

Tags: Roger Cremers, Gluklya, Charlotte Schleiffert, Albrecht Schnider