Kurt Kocherscheidt
14 Dec 2013 - 15 Feb 2014
KURT KOCHERSCHEIDT
Retrospektive - Kuratiert von Veit Loers
14 December 2013 - 15 February 2014
Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to present the exhibition "Kurt Kocherscheidt" in cooperation with the Essl Museum. Representative works from all his important groups of work are shown, the curator is the German art historian Veit Loers.
At the centre is Kocherscheidt as a surreal, visionary artist who in his deliberately ascetic painting scrutinises objects and signals from his surroundings for their hermetic possibilities and finds an answer to them in painting. The Kocherscheidt exhibition seeks to re-evaluate the painter and his work from a present-day perspective at a time when the positioning of figurative and abstract painting is regarded as no longer relevant. The exhibition has been predominantly composed from stocks from the major collections of Kocherscheidt – the Morat Institute in Freiburg/Breisgau, the Essl Collection and from Botho von Portatius, Berlin, as well as from the estate.
Kurt Kocherscheidt – Painter, Naturalist and Visionary
“After starting scenically fantastic painting in the late 1960s, the development of Kurt Kocherscheidt’s painting first starts in the mid 1970s. A journey to South America (1972/73) had brought Kocherscheidt the painter closer to the dreams of the naturalist. The purchase of a rural property in Grieselstein (Jennersdorf) in southern Burgenland and his stays there intensify his observation of the natural world. Still-life-like scenes allow the microcosm, the world of insects and of diluvial or volcanic earth formations surrealistically to break into reality, at a time when painting itself has little international relevance or regard. The exhibition dedicates generous space to this early work of the late 1970s, because it is the key to the consolidation in content and painting of the later years. During the years of the painting movement at the start of the 1980s, Kurt Kocherscheidt dynamises his motives step by step and reduces them to puzzling signs between Eros and Thanatos. Mediterranean myth, from Colchis in the east to the Pillars of Hercules in the west, now enters as a continuous new theme, as if the past were returning in coded archetypes like masks, codices and golden discs. Out of the surreal still lifes and genre motifs of the early period there now grow dark ornaments, surface areas and cavities. Kurt Kocherscheidt answers the abstract-painting climate of the late 80s with reduced, dark signs.
Kurt Kocherscheidt, the painter with sculptural tendencies who met an early death, was born in Carinthia in 1943 and after an art degree in Vienna co-founded the artists’ group ‘Wirklichkeiten’ [Realities] (1968). In 1973 he married the photographer Elfie Semotan. Although he appeared in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad (the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna, the Rupertinum Salzburg, the Vienna Secession, the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the MAK in Vienna and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Gent), at the end even at Documenta IX in Kassel, he remained a loner. His oeuvre has not yet received its deserved international regard, not least because the international appreciation of painting accords an outsider role to this unwieldy work.” (Veit Loers)
A comprehensive catalogue with a preface by Prof. Karlheinz Essl and an essay by Veit Loers accompanies the exhibition.
Retrospektive - Kuratiert von Veit Loers
14 December 2013 - 15 February 2014
Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to present the exhibition "Kurt Kocherscheidt" in cooperation with the Essl Museum. Representative works from all his important groups of work are shown, the curator is the German art historian Veit Loers.
At the centre is Kocherscheidt as a surreal, visionary artist who in his deliberately ascetic painting scrutinises objects and signals from his surroundings for their hermetic possibilities and finds an answer to them in painting. The Kocherscheidt exhibition seeks to re-evaluate the painter and his work from a present-day perspective at a time when the positioning of figurative and abstract painting is regarded as no longer relevant. The exhibition has been predominantly composed from stocks from the major collections of Kocherscheidt – the Morat Institute in Freiburg/Breisgau, the Essl Collection and from Botho von Portatius, Berlin, as well as from the estate.
Kurt Kocherscheidt – Painter, Naturalist and Visionary
“After starting scenically fantastic painting in the late 1960s, the development of Kurt Kocherscheidt’s painting first starts in the mid 1970s. A journey to South America (1972/73) had brought Kocherscheidt the painter closer to the dreams of the naturalist. The purchase of a rural property in Grieselstein (Jennersdorf) in southern Burgenland and his stays there intensify his observation of the natural world. Still-life-like scenes allow the microcosm, the world of insects and of diluvial or volcanic earth formations surrealistically to break into reality, at a time when painting itself has little international relevance or regard. The exhibition dedicates generous space to this early work of the late 1970s, because it is the key to the consolidation in content and painting of the later years. During the years of the painting movement at the start of the 1980s, Kurt Kocherscheidt dynamises his motives step by step and reduces them to puzzling signs between Eros and Thanatos. Mediterranean myth, from Colchis in the east to the Pillars of Hercules in the west, now enters as a continuous new theme, as if the past were returning in coded archetypes like masks, codices and golden discs. Out of the surreal still lifes and genre motifs of the early period there now grow dark ornaments, surface areas and cavities. Kurt Kocherscheidt answers the abstract-painting climate of the late 80s with reduced, dark signs.
Kurt Kocherscheidt, the painter with sculptural tendencies who met an early death, was born in Carinthia in 1943 and after an art degree in Vienna co-founded the artists’ group ‘Wirklichkeiten’ [Realities] (1968). In 1973 he married the photographer Elfie Semotan. Although he appeared in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad (the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna, the Rupertinum Salzburg, the Vienna Secession, the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the MAK in Vienna and the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Gent), at the end even at Documenta IX in Kassel, he remained a loner. His oeuvre has not yet received its deserved international regard, not least because the international appreciation of painting accords an outsider role to this unwieldy work.” (Veit Loers)
A comprehensive catalogue with a preface by Prof. Karlheinz Essl and an essay by Veit Loers accompanies the exhibition.