Kunstmuseum Bern

Kotscha Reist

11 May - 30 Jun 2012

© Kotscha Reist
Freundinnen "Neid" (2008)
Öl auf Leinweind
120 × 175cm
Kunstmuseum Bern.
KUNSTMUSEUM BERN @ PROGR
KOTSCHA REIST: ECHOES. PAINTINGS
Works from the Collection
11 May - 30 June 2012

In conjunction with the publication of Kotscha Reist’s new monography, the Kunstmuseum Bern is presenting works by the Bernese artist from its own collection together with an additional selection of paintings.

The work Freundinnen "Neid" (Girlfriends “Envy”), executed in 2004, and Night on earth 2, which was completed four years later, are exemplary for the two extremes in the development of Kotscha Reist’s art and the approaches he pursued in painting. On one hand we find, rendered after a photograph, a multi-layered image of two small girls, whose attitudes and facial expressions insinuate a narrative of emotions addressing feelings of envy. On the other hand, we have before us a depiction of night as a vacuous black surface that is broken only by a few dots and ribbons of light transforming a landscape into a purely abstract painting. In a concentrated response to visual cultural memory while likewise exploring the narrative possibilities of painting, Kotscha Reist constantly invents new visual imagery that is best described as existing on the threshold between memory and poetry.

Kotscha Reist: Biography
Kotscha Reist (b. Feb. 5, 1963, in Bern) grew up in circles that were interested in art and ar-chitecture. After completing his training as a photographer in Bern he studied art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Since 1995 he regularly exhibits in Bern and the surrounding region, as well as in Den Haag, Holland, and Paris, France. Besides painting he ad-ditionally has been lecturing since 1997 at the Ecole Cantonale d’art du Valais in Sierre and at other art academies too. Reist has won a number of awards. Among them was a Dutch scholarship (Stichting Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst) in 1994 and a sponsorship prize from Aeschlimann Corti Foundation. In 1999 he lived in New York in a studio that was part of a scholarship for Bernese artists to work abroad and in 2010 was again awarded such a scholarship from the canton of Bern for working abroad as an artist, this time with a studio in Berlin.
 

Tags: Gerrit Rietveld