Friedrich Kunath
24 Oct - 06 Dec 2008
© Friedrich Kunath
Pancho, 2008
Wood, mixed media
approx. 90 inches each, installed dimensions variable
Pancho, 2008
Wood, mixed media
approx. 90 inches each, installed dimensions variable
FRIEDRICH KUNATH
"Emoh"
October 24 – December 6, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, October 24th, 6 – 8 pm
Blum & Poe is please to announce our third solo exhibition of Friedrich Kunath. The exhibition will present painting, sculpture, and photography.
Kunath’s new body of work, partly inspired by his move this year from Cologne to Los Angeles, uses ambitious scale, giving his pieces a theatrical quality, while they remain grounded by their fundamental emotional import. In the paintings, appropriated silkscreened imagery contrasts and cavorts with striking washes of psychedelic stains, all the while playing with personal place and belongingness. His sculptures also combine and corrupt iconic depictions of home and their civilizing “baggage” with a sense of wild wanderlust and a grasping for the unattainable.
The sculptures include an oversized cartoonish arm reaching into the gallery through the roof, as it offers a rainbow made of seven upholstery fabrics in its, inexplicably, four-fingered hand. A large snail of cast bronze lumbers along contemplatively with a toy model of a modernist architectural house on its back. Another sculpture of a miniature house holds several of the artist’s personal possessions like totems for comfort and familiarity, while holes in its roof and a forever spinning weather vane belie any feeling of security. Additionally, there will be two sculptures comprised of small thrift store and yard sale objects attached to pedestals hanging, and watching, from the ceiling. This simple spatial disorientation beckons a larger mental, perspectival transformation, and like the rest of the works builds a place for “insides” and “outsides” to blend with the romantic search for beauty and purity in ironies, both grand and humble.
In 2008 Friedrich Kunath had a solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, CO and was included in the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA. A selection of other recent exhibition venues include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Tate Modern, London, UK; Museum Für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt Am Main, Germany; Maggazzino d’arte moderna, Rome, Italy, BQ Gallery, Cologne; and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. In 2009, Friedrich will have an exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany. Kunath was born Chemnitz, Germany and was awarded both the Peter Mertes Stipendium, Kunstverein Bonn, Germany in 2001 and Arbeitsstipendium der Jürgen Ponto – Stiftlung, Frankfurt AM Main, Germany in 2005.
"Emoh"
October 24 – December 6, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, October 24th, 6 – 8 pm
Blum & Poe is please to announce our third solo exhibition of Friedrich Kunath. The exhibition will present painting, sculpture, and photography.
Kunath’s new body of work, partly inspired by his move this year from Cologne to Los Angeles, uses ambitious scale, giving his pieces a theatrical quality, while they remain grounded by their fundamental emotional import. In the paintings, appropriated silkscreened imagery contrasts and cavorts with striking washes of psychedelic stains, all the while playing with personal place and belongingness. His sculptures also combine and corrupt iconic depictions of home and their civilizing “baggage” with a sense of wild wanderlust and a grasping for the unattainable.
The sculptures include an oversized cartoonish arm reaching into the gallery through the roof, as it offers a rainbow made of seven upholstery fabrics in its, inexplicably, four-fingered hand. A large snail of cast bronze lumbers along contemplatively with a toy model of a modernist architectural house on its back. Another sculpture of a miniature house holds several of the artist’s personal possessions like totems for comfort and familiarity, while holes in its roof and a forever spinning weather vane belie any feeling of security. Additionally, there will be two sculptures comprised of small thrift store and yard sale objects attached to pedestals hanging, and watching, from the ceiling. This simple spatial disorientation beckons a larger mental, perspectival transformation, and like the rest of the works builds a place for “insides” and “outsides” to blend with the romantic search for beauty and purity in ironies, both grand and humble.
In 2008 Friedrich Kunath had a solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, CO and was included in the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA. A selection of other recent exhibition venues include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Tate Modern, London, UK; Museum Für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt Am Main, Germany; Maggazzino d’arte moderna, Rome, Italy, BQ Gallery, Cologne; and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. In 2009, Friedrich will have an exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany. Kunath was born Chemnitz, Germany and was awarded both the Peter Mertes Stipendium, Kunstverein Bonn, Germany in 2001 and Arbeitsstipendium der Jürgen Ponto – Stiftlung, Frankfurt AM Main, Germany in 2005.