Kerstin Drechsel & Günther-Jürgen Klein
02 Nov - 07 Dec 2013
KERSTIN DRECHSEL & GÜNTHER-JÜRGEN KLEIN
ZUSAMMEN
2 November – 7 December 2013
SEPTEMBER/CONTAINER is pleased to present ZUSAMMEN, a joint exhibition of works by Kerstin Drechsel and Günther-Jürgen Klein. ZUSAMMEN focuses on the exchange between the two painters’ perspectives and at the same time explores different ideas about and forms of community, relationship, and togetherness.
The impetus for the exhibition was provided by a juxtaposition of Kerstin Drechsel’s explicitly lesbian and feminist position with the often comic-like work of Günther-Jürgen Klein. In the series by the painter (who was born in 1955), fictive heroes experience erotic and romantic adventures inspired by the artist’s own life as well as by legendary comics from the 1940s to the 1970s, such as Spirou and Fantasio by André Franquin. In these works, Klein takes up the heterosexual role models and stereotypes of the genre and combines them with various influences: crime literature, film noir, Federico Fellini’s films.
Kerstin Drechsel executed two large works for the exhibition that are hybrids consisting of a lying painting and a tabletop. They are the first works of her series zusammen, for which she has done research since 2011.
The starting point is food. Drechsel cooks for friends on a regular basis. At these get-togethers, she talks with them about their (often very special) relationship with their mothers and Drechsel records a number of very personal stories. She transferred fragments of these records onto the table painting using different architectural and handicraft stencils. Drechsel uses this stenciled lettering partly because it conveys a certain sobriety and objectivity, but mainly because it is connected with floor plans, furniture, living, and building and connote designs for home life in the family and couples relationships.
In Drechsel’s table works these short texts are overlain with painterly gestures and traces, are “dirtied,” as it were – covered with painted edges of glasses, abrasions, adhesive tape residue, stickers, and spots. While the texts provide neutral descriptions of the state of symbiotic relationships and cases of psychological and physical violence, they are covered by an emotionally charged abstract figurative allover. The motifs and shapes allude to childhood memories, to “telling stories,” whether among friends, in the family, or in a therapy group. Corresponding to this, Drechsel is exhibiting a number of small paintings that show women’s groups, books, Fanzines, and demonstrations and are linked to alternative kinds of community: concrete feminist and political action.
In Günther-Jürgen Klein’s paintings, a completely different image of community and togetherness is addressed: women who wait for their husbands to come home from work and greet them intensely and longingly, couples, and singles. For ZUSAMMEN Klein worked for the first time not on the basis of drawings, but based on color. His fictive hero Michael D. goes through an odyssey of different situations which at the same time is a cycle of colors and emotional states: orange, terracotta, pink, black and white.
At the same time, Klein creates distance through the comic-like depiction of his figures and his casual, open style. The painterly realm, which is only hinted at in details, is also a realm of representation in which basic motifs from romantic love, intimacy, lust, and loneliness are run through and deconstructed in ever-new formal constellations.
ZUSAMMEN
2 November – 7 December 2013
SEPTEMBER/CONTAINER is pleased to present ZUSAMMEN, a joint exhibition of works by Kerstin Drechsel and Günther-Jürgen Klein. ZUSAMMEN focuses on the exchange between the two painters’ perspectives and at the same time explores different ideas about and forms of community, relationship, and togetherness.
The impetus for the exhibition was provided by a juxtaposition of Kerstin Drechsel’s explicitly lesbian and feminist position with the often comic-like work of Günther-Jürgen Klein. In the series by the painter (who was born in 1955), fictive heroes experience erotic and romantic adventures inspired by the artist’s own life as well as by legendary comics from the 1940s to the 1970s, such as Spirou and Fantasio by André Franquin. In these works, Klein takes up the heterosexual role models and stereotypes of the genre and combines them with various influences: crime literature, film noir, Federico Fellini’s films.
Kerstin Drechsel executed two large works for the exhibition that are hybrids consisting of a lying painting and a tabletop. They are the first works of her series zusammen, for which she has done research since 2011.
The starting point is food. Drechsel cooks for friends on a regular basis. At these get-togethers, she talks with them about their (often very special) relationship with their mothers and Drechsel records a number of very personal stories. She transferred fragments of these records onto the table painting using different architectural and handicraft stencils. Drechsel uses this stenciled lettering partly because it conveys a certain sobriety and objectivity, but mainly because it is connected with floor plans, furniture, living, and building and connote designs for home life in the family and couples relationships.
In Drechsel’s table works these short texts are overlain with painterly gestures and traces, are “dirtied,” as it were – covered with painted edges of glasses, abrasions, adhesive tape residue, stickers, and spots. While the texts provide neutral descriptions of the state of symbiotic relationships and cases of psychological and physical violence, they are covered by an emotionally charged abstract figurative allover. The motifs and shapes allude to childhood memories, to “telling stories,” whether among friends, in the family, or in a therapy group. Corresponding to this, Drechsel is exhibiting a number of small paintings that show women’s groups, books, Fanzines, and demonstrations and are linked to alternative kinds of community: concrete feminist and political action.
In Günther-Jürgen Klein’s paintings, a completely different image of community and togetherness is addressed: women who wait for their husbands to come home from work and greet them intensely and longingly, couples, and singles. For ZUSAMMEN Klein worked for the first time not on the basis of drawings, but based on color. His fictive hero Michael D. goes through an odyssey of different situations which at the same time is a cycle of colors and emotional states: orange, terracotta, pink, black and white.
At the same time, Klein creates distance through the comic-like depiction of his figures and his casual, open style. The painterly realm, which is only hinted at in details, is also a realm of representation in which basic motifs from romantic love, intimacy, lust, and loneliness are run through and deconstructed in ever-new formal constellations.