Thomas Rehbein

After two successful shows in 1998 and 2001, we are glad to present the third solo show of the British artist Gerard Hemsworth in our gallery.

„...Little in these pictures obstructs clear recognition: they invite access by the very young and uninitiated as much as the wizened art connoisseur. The commonality insisted upon by these pictures and the deprivileging of the 'serious', grown-up, refined appreciation of art as the proper or right one is a first indication of the work they do. And they not only equalize the social status, experience and privileges of the viewers of images but also the conditions and prospects of art itself in relation to a general image-production. If painting and drawing continue to be the leading techniques of an art-production that privileges the hand and its mark-making as index of the artist's uniqueness, then the reduced, near mechanical grammar of these pictures indicate that these traditional methods of picture-making are for Hemsworth instead only methods and strategies to be played off against one another to unsettle the assumed primacy of the hand - and perhaps even of the artist with regard to picture-making.“ (...)

(Extract from a text by Suhail Malik, 2009)