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LOVE WILL DESTROY US IN THE END Adam Bota - Gallows II, 2013, oil on canvas, 160×200cm Art Suites Gallery, Beyoĝlu-Istanbul April 9 - May 4 2013 Gábor A. Nagy Adam Bota Adam Magyar Anne Wölk Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view Love Will Destroy Us In The EndWithout hope we don´t have anything. BallboyIn the midst of an era, whose effective internal value systems are only pursued to the point where they cease to be commercial viable, we find it increasingly more difficult to orientate ourselves, and to find simple guiding principles for engaging with the world around us. This post-industrial and pervasively digital age is one characterized by the simultaneous incidence of each and every signifier at once. All existing values and cultural templates are thus, as a result of their omnipresence, pitted against each other in a permanent battle for media supremacy. In light of this dilemma, it makes sense to take what may seem a romantic step backwards, in order to find a truly relevant value system - one that proves resistant in the face of the present circumstances. In other words, a common denominator, operating in a space outside of and beyond the prevailing economic-cultural battle for dominance. It is perhaps in the field of tension that exists between feeling, love and heightened emotion, where we find our last illustrious place of refuge, a space for mindfulness and for focusing on those most vital aspects - or lifeblood - of the human condition. As such, one turns to the most intense spectrum of human emotions - and in turn, the associated feelings of impending failure, sudden finality and the intrinsic and everlasting pursuit of a new sense of love - as the last glimmer of hope against the technical assimilation of the modern world. The mirror of emotional experience heightens the concentration of the observational perspective, while also allowing for a much-needed sense of distance from the unfeeling apathy of the modern media landscape. Faith in an infallible ideal and the simultaneous fear of loss, open up the breadth of tension and feeling inherent in life itself, to observation from the outside. In terms of parallels, one inevitably turns to our reception of contemporary art which also establishes an essential distance to the world and thereby proves particularly emphatic in its portrayal of living reality, particularly in terms of the fragility and manipulation of the landscape of human emotion. As such, the contemporary artist is in a position to develop a relevant visual grammar which, in conveying to the observer an intense visual experience, can reflect the problematic relationships at play in purely aesthetic terms. The artists featured in this exhibition are capable of filtering our reality of its tired marketing strategies and affirmative-image offensives, establishing in their place a system of images which serves not only to capture the ambivalence of life but, in their deeper analyses, an emotional field of tension - all by means of their aesthetic characteristics and visual metaphors. The Viennese painter Adam Bota, for example, delivers images of dissolution, whereby the dullness of his oils, the pictorial blurring and the reduction of colour in favour of a calculated sense of ecstasy, point to the elusiveness of the human psyche. The reduction in Bota's work equates to a form of densification which offers only one escape route: the path that leads back inwards towards itself. Anne Wölk, on the other hand, encages and confines the scenes she paints, reminiscent of Max Beckmann's work before her. The viewer's access to her figures is superimposed from outside - ornaments and geometric figures take on their own lives, then diagonal lines trap the observer's gaze in the depths of the image. The interdependent abstract and concrete pictorial elements reside in a highly emotionally-charged atmosphere, from which the viewer's eye finds it difficult to escape. In Adam Magyar's featured video work, commuters at Berlin's Alexanderplatz underground station are captured in a moment of insistent physical progress but seem, upon the arrival of the Berlin U-Bahn, somehow rigid at the same time. The figures are filmed from within the moving train using a slow-motion scanning technique developed by the artist himself. This provides a level of clarity that far exceeds that of normal, everyday perception and the images are at the same time encircled by vibrating, suggestive sound. The individual is hereby once more an individual: he or she emerges, unique, from the surrounding mass. What should be invisible moments of feeling in the faces of these figures, now resonate clearly, allowing the city commuters to protrude from the crowd in a way that goes beyond mere physicality and enters the realm of emotionality. The viewer confronted with this image is sucked into what seems to be a moment of complete urban silence. Just as frozen in the moment are the figures in the work of Gábor A. Nagy. They seem to hang and waft over a black background which perhaps stands as a representation of a realm of nothingness. With his monochrome black, Nagy serves, in his own way, to preempt what we might refer to as "the End", creating cipher-like textual mosaics. With the work acting as a type of black Tabula Rasa, we are absorbed slowly but irreversibly into the image by motifs that become increasingly clear in view of our inner eye, programming us with their logic. This fragile pictorial situation is a sensory stimulus that prepares us for an ending, and while that end may only be metaphorical, the sensory resonance of these images lies in the fact that the only refuge we are afforded from their iridescent haziness is the path that leads to a dark nothingness. The text fragments Nagy uses originate in part from British independent music lyrics and portray (as is the case with the image “Love Will Destroy Us In The End” shown here) a longing for happiness and love in our cultural present. Feeling is given concrete form in both formal aesthetic and textual terms, albeit in a distant, dark universe. All these artists achieve a heightened densification and compression in their works, thereby delivering an insistent aesthetic charged in the most diverse ways with a spectrum of emotions. Using carefully calculated visual concepts, they address the themes of dissolution, stagnation, retreat, separation and isolation while pointing to a contemplative utopia only now possible within the sequestered realm of the art space. Thus the works present an answer to the banal mélange of the image-saturated, affirmative-media landscape we are surrounded by. As alluded to by the title of the exhibition, this is a group of artists that seeks to expose the ambivalence of contemporary life to an extreme tension, while not shying away from - and here we need only look at the cover of this catalogue - potential self-destruction as a visual theme. Uwe Goldenstein F R A G I L E W O R L D SSKRØBELIGE VERDENERThe temptation is rife, to follow your lead, colour your eyes, to take your chances, to take your chances whilst you have them - James Yorkston Attila Szűcs - Leo is sitting in an armchair, 2011, oil on canvas, 190×240cm Museum Sønderjylland, Haderslev DK June 16 - August 12 2012 Kunstforeningen Det Ny Kastet DK August 17 - September 15 2012 Kalundborg Kunstforening DK September 22 - October 28 2012 Henning Larsen's Kunstpavilion, Videbæk DK November 2 - December 16 2012 Adam Bota Leo Ferdinando Demetz Konstantin Déry Alejandro Rodríguez González Simone Haack René Holm Eoin Llewellyn Enda O'Donoghue J.M.Pozo Steffi Stangl Stepanek & Maslin Attila Szűcs Kinki Texas Jens Thiele Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Catalogue Exhibition view (Videbæk) Exhibition view (Kalundborg) Exhibition view (Det Ny Kastet) FRAGILE WORLDS is the second exhibition of works by the Berlin-based artist collective BSA — BERLIN SELECTED ARTISTS in Denmark. The first BSA exhibition in Denmark was shown in Aalborg (YOUNG EUROPEAN LANDSCAPE, 2011). Concentrating on the broken relations between mankind and nature, the exhibition was also shown in Berlin at the Collegium Hungaricum's Moholy Nagy Gallery. I founded BSA in 2010, after several years of international research for artists of both outstanding talent and philosophically relevant quality. BSA is focussed on contemporary painting: a profound medium of slowness, contemplation and reflection. As a place for expressive and solitary reflection, contemporary painting offers a kind of magical space, pointing out an alternative trajectory to the hyper-digitalised, banal decomposition and shallow perception of our present. Located in Berlin, BSA is based on international partnerships with galleries, institutes and museums in Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Denmark and Germany. While BSA's ambition is to give a representative impression of the contemporary European art scene, its vision aims at establishing a content-related, sophisticated art, able to truly reflect our present and question the spirit of our times in a quiet and critical way. The BSA group is basically characterized by its international origins and presence, as well as by its forthright interchange off the usual commercial interests. Since Berlin has come to be known as the new European metropolis of arts, most of the BSA artists, attracted by its vibrance and diversity, also live and work there. Some live in different European countries but regularly join BSA events and exhibitions. Metaphorically speaking, BSA works more like an artistic-philosophical traveller circus than an art gallery. An example of BSA's flexibilty is the exhibition TECHNOLOGY WON'T SAVE US. YOUNG ART FROM BERLIN (2011) in Istanbul. In the context of the local biennial arts festival I presented the works of eleven BSA artists, thus evoking a novel and vivid cultural and intellectual exchange. Thematically, FRAGILE WELTEN concentrates on the fragility of the world we live in, especially on the vunerability — often concealed beneath shining surfaces — of an environment constantly undergoing demystification. At its core, the exhibition is constituted by the formal and aesthetical arrangement and intersection of 14 different artists' positions (the works of 11 painters are combined with sculptures, collages, machines and experiments). But fragility can also be found in the sensitive structures of the works themselves. Furthermore, the exhibition's underlying curatorial concept tells stories and creates emotions that critically challenge the functional perfection of our lives. The precision and perfection of the works point to a hermetically sealed, hidden world, which offers viewers a momentary exit from the familiarity of everyday life. Compared to a reality that is increasingly detached from individual interiors, the experience of nature and the mystical roots of being, the contemplative mood of the exhibition seems all the more fragile. The absurdities, pictorial signs of decomposition and magical appearances within highly composed counterworlds presented here are a reaction to an evermore incomprehensible reality — which in its rapid pace, global synchronicity and rigidly functional ideology may actually be more fragile than it likes to pretend. The artists' fragile worlds thus come to oppose a purely affirmative present, which — akin to an artificial ecstasy — endlessly reproduces itself and, owing to an ahistorical, thoroughly digitalised structure, vehemently curtails or indeed eliminates time for reflection, contemplation and rest. In this context, the present exhibition presents a highly topical projection surface, a space for withdrawal and recollection, dedicated to slowness and contemplation, to weightlessness and secretive moments. It is particularly addressed to a younger generation, which — exactly like the BSA artists — is driven by an urgent desire for withdrawal, and consciously seeks salvation in complexly layered, oftentimes surreal spaces, that offer an escape from a thoroughly rationalised, linear reality. FRAGILE WORLDS: a mild form of trance, a highly relevant parallel world, a quiet, subtle appeal to detachment and metaphysical flotation. Uwe Goldenstein BREAKING GOD'S HEART Enda O'Donoghue - Artificial Light, 2012, oil on canvas, 180×240cm, private collection, Bremen Liebkranz Galerie Berlin, Auguststrasse 62 September 7 - November 3 2012 Gábor A. Nagy Juan Béjar Adam Bota Rudy Cremonini Enda O'Donoghue Adam Magyar Stepanek & Maslin Steffi Stangl The Vision Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Catalogue Exhibition view  The artists involved in this show seem to turn to the world's creator in order to vehemently defend their free terrain of visionary concentration. In their own way, they are attempting to retreat back towards what was once a consummate, holistic, and mystical existence. Indeed, at some point one pauses to behold the world, confronted with that titanic contribution of humanity: the total transition of the world into a thoroughly digitalized parallel reality. Not even man's creator himself could have predicted it. That continued path into the most artificial of worlds would sink even the heart of the Maker. In contrast, this show relocates authentic experience to the redemptive shores of an island called artistic immanence. The artists of Breaking God's Heart tread the boundaries of what is aesthetically possible: they are armed and ready to look any kind of God/Master in the eye, by propagating a magical, transmodern pantheism with maximum intensity, emotion and concentration. U. Goldenstein THIS IS HARDCORENEW BERLIN PAINTING Gábor A. Nagy - Endorphin, 2011, acrylics on canvas, 100×280cm Potsdam Shanghai Business Center August 11 - November 10 2012 Gábor A. Nagy Alejandro Rodríguez González Deenesh Ghyczy Simone Haack René Holm Franziska Klotz Eoin Llewellyn Kinki Texas Horst Waigel Anne Wölk Zhang Hui Mechthild Beckmann Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view  INTO THE WOODS Stepanek & Maslin - Untitled 2-11, oil on canvas, 70×200cm Galerie im Park, Bremen July 15 - September 9 2012 René Holm Stepanek &Maslin Konstantin Déry Leo Ferdinando Demetz The Vision Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view Eröffnungsrede, Dr. Detlef Stein Dem Wald haftet seit jeher ein Moment des Magischen an. Er bleibt trotz seiner fortschreitenden Domestizierung ein Ort des Irrationalen, eine Gegenwelt zu unseren lärmenden Städten und geglätteten Landschaften. Nicht von ungefähr wählen gerade heute, in einer Zeit des Ungreifbaren, die geprägt ist von der Entgrenzung von Naturerfahrung zugunsten seiner digitalen Aufbereitung, Künstler den Wald als eines ihrer Leitbilder. Das düstere Zwielicht des Waldes ist für sie der Gegenentwurf zum hellen Sonnenlicht der Vernunft einerseits und einer technischen Ver- bzw. Überblendung andererseits. Die Künstler von INTO THE WOODS führen den Blick tief in die Ölschichten und in eine verlangsamte, nahezu stillstehende wenn auch von Bedrohung nicht ganz befreite Welt. Die anonyme Berliner Künstlergruppe "The Vision" wird zudem eine Außeninstallation im angrenzenden Eichenwald der Galerie realisieren. Insgesamt erwartet die Besucher ein vielfältig und subtil wuchernder Bilderwald, in dem man sich im besten Sinne verlaufen weil verlieren kann. Uwe Goldenstein  
DRAW THE LINE Kinki Texas - Stille Post, 2010, mixed media on paper, 42×30cm Liebkranz Galerie Berlin, Auguststr. 62 June 29 - August 10 2012 Kinki Texas J.M. Pozo Alejandro Rodríguez González Josep Maynou Martin & Sicilia Melissa Steckbauer Santiago Idañez Douglas Savage Alexander Storobogatov Hyjin Won Curated by VISUAL NOISE MANIFESTO Co-Curator: Uwe Goldenstein Das immer schon elementarste Medium in der Kunst war und ist die Zeichnung. Eine direkte Übertragung der menschlichen Vorstellungskraft auf die Spitze des Zeichenstiftes. Die Linie, sei sie kühn und gerade gezogen oder fragmentarisch geschwungen, bildet den Anfang für eine neue Welt auf dem Papier, die sich stets im Unbewussten des Künstlers herumtreibt. Sie findet einen direkten, oft schnellen Ausdruck, welcher der geplanten Komposition, wie beispielsweise für ein großes figuratives Gemälde, durch seine unmittelbare Übertragung vorauszueilen vermag. Die graphische Ausarbeitung schafft eine Verdichtung und Reflexion der anfänglichen Idee. Geöffnet für eine Bilderzählung der fragilen Art. Das macht die Zeichnung zum Psychogramm, die einzelne Linie zum Anagramm der in ihrem Umfang ohnehin nie zu erreichenden Künstlerseele. Durch die bewusste Offenheit und Leerstellung des Narrativen gewinnt die zeichnerische Bilderzählung aber einen besonders projektionsreichen und somit wahrhaftigen Charakter. Verfolgen Sie die wunderbar leichten, mystischen, manchmal auch traurigen und oft wie aus einer anderen Welt entschlüpften Linien und die teilweise süffisant absurden graphischen Verdichtungen der zumeist in Berlin zeichnenden Künstler. Uwe Goldenstein I'M SORRY. I DID NOT REALIZE YOU! Port Art Gallery, Ankara April 20 - May 20 2012 Curated by ERKAN DOĞANAY Co-curated by BSA Gábor A. Nagy Sultan Acar Denîz Aktaş Seren Ceren Asyali Müge Bîlgîn Adam Bota Seçîl Büyükkan Erkan Doğanay A.R. González Denîz Gökduman Gülderen Görenek Deenesh Ghyczy Şenay Kazalova Serdal Kesgîn Hurî Kîrîş Franziska Klotz Razîye Kubat Burak Kutlay Ekîn Onat von Merhart Burak Can Öztaş Şevket Sönmez Ipek Şenel Tan Taspolatoğlu Anne Wölk  ADAM MAGYAR. UNDERWORLDPhotographs from the 21st Century Collegium Hungaricum Berlin December 9 2011 - February 19 2012 Curated by Uwe Goldenstein  TECHNOLOGY WON'T SAVE USInternational Young Art from BerlinOn the occasion of the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011 Art Suites Gallery, Beyoĝlu-Istanbul September 15 - October 15 2011 Gábor A. Nagy Adam Bota Jessica Buhlmann Konstantin Déry Deenesh Ghyczy Simone Haack René Holm Franziska Klotz Alejandro Rodríguez González Steffi Stangl Anne Wölk Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Catalogue Part 1 (türkçe/engl/dt) Catalogue Part 2 (türkçe/engl/dt) Exhibition view  I’m a king in my head. I cripple in the world. Malcolm Middleton The codified world which we inhabit no longer signifies process or becoming. It tells no stories, and inhabiting it does not mean acting. That it has ceased to mean this, is what is known as the crisis of values. For we are still largely programmed by texts — programmed for history, for science, for political programmes, for art. We read the world, for instance logically and mathematically. But the new generation, programmed by techno-images, no longer shares our values. And we don’t yet know which meaning the techno-images surrounding us are programming for. The crisis of values quoted here, presciently foreseen by the philosopher Vilém Flusser in 1978, has since evolved into a permanent crisis of a social lifeworld which is today determined by the simultaneity, banality and randomness of the images that incessantly program us. The participants in this exhibition are members of the new generation described by Flusser, since almost all the artists were born in the 1970s. Their work — mostly painting — is a response to the techno-images that have by now created a parallel and self-contained digital world. The break with history, as described by Flusser, is radically echoed by Gábor A. Nagy: in his paintings, all historical texts which we are potentially still programmed with are ultimately condemned to be meaningless. Composed of lyrical fragments, these paintings reduce the world to a black monochrome surface, upon which figures appear to float like ciphers — they have become an intangible motive. The paintings’ revocation and negation of both image background and figuration results in a general, symbolically charged sense of distance and placelessness, that suggests an ahistorical relationship to the world. The narrative context and relationships appear to loose themselves in this blackened-out environment. Thus Nagy’s images, lacking a horizon and perhaps even a space, comment on an uprooted, demystified, and hyper-technological civilisation, whose overall out-of-focus state is almost impossible to represent. Like the other artists in this show, Nagy rises to the challenge with comparatively archaic technical means. With his image of a club (see below), Adam Bota forcefully demonstrates where painting is superior to other artistic genres, notably (digital) photography: in opposition to the sober and utterly schematic reproduction of the world as a grid of bits and bytes, he proposes a deep and many-layered representation by means of paint. The light is cast so as to melt all figures in this scene together, into an inscrutable, anonymous grouping; while the colouring, mainly shifting tones of blue, unites the blurred bodies in a shared, melancholy mood. The dancing individual is transformed into an anonymous model of itself; individuality is lost in the depths of the canvas. Bota thus visualises a dilemma of a lifeworld increasingly colonised by technological progress: rather than relishing life in the world of the club and allowing oneself to be overwhelmed by trance-like techno music, the experience turns into a novel form of retreat and isolation, paired with involuntary self-awareness.  Adam Bota - Club I, 2011, oil on canvas, 200×170cm In response to a society pulsating and advancing to the beat of techno, artists such as Bota or Nagy affirm the distinctly different pace of painting. They force us to pause and bring time to a standstill, so as to allow for a deliberately slow-motion immersion into the layers — and ambiguities — of paint. In this sense, the exhibition’s title carries a positive message: it is a summons to contemplate and come back to ourselves, our own, suggestive ideas of and desires for individual freedom. In this show, the desire to loose oneself and strive for identity in sublime, artificially secluded, parallel realities comes to be the leitmotif of a contemporary, perhaps even romantic attitude and mindset. For their aesthetic reflections, the artists resort to depictions of absence and employ the dissolution of space as a visual strategy (see for instance Franziska Klotz). Likewise, a topical concern with technically altered forms of perception and experimentation with non-linear notions of time (see for instance Deenesh Ghyczy) question our world-views at a sensual level. The purely functional world is kept at bay or even reconquered with artistic means, as can be seen in Anne Wölk’s abstractly overlayered landscapes, or Simone Haack’s seemingly meditative figures. The different states of selfhood explored in TECHNOLOGY WON’T SAVE US correspond to an ultimate state of — mental and physical — being, capable of aesthetically reappropriating the last remains of analogue experience, in a world packed to the brim with technology and forever repeating itself in never-ending digital loops. The Berlin-based artists seek out a magical atmosphere of deep immersion and searching, and subscribe fully to a withdrawal into the spheres of art — an alternative form of space that may only be aesthetic, but in which individuality can nonetheless flourish undivided and mark a silent opposition. The unconscious, too, comes into its own and plays a particularly dominant role. It is perhaps the last power capable of resisting the clutch of technological conditioning, the endless, affirmative flickering of techno-images, as described by Vilém Flusser. This exhibition is very much in his spirit: it challenges us to imagine a new world view, to critically examine our technically saturated lifeworld, and thus ultimately ourselves: We no longer stand before a riddle. Instead, we are in the midst of a secret: in the mystery of the absurd. And this is a secret which we no longer seek to decode, for it is illegible. Instead, we seek to give it a meaning, to project our own signs onto it. In our newly emergent world view, there are no more backgrounds: the world is but an up-front surface that has nothing to conceal. A cinema screen, onto which we conjure meaning. Though not as projectors, but as knots contained within the fabric of the screen. This as yet inconceivable world view is that of the coming information society. (Flusser 1995) To speak in terms of Flusser’s imagery: to comprehend how the individual is immanently knotted and woven into his or her technologically determined surroundings, and to imagine an existence without background — once again, see Gábor A. Nagy —, requires a considerable effort and degree of self-reflection. It also needs strong and not least mysterious impulses, and I believe this is precisely what the artists in this show provide. Uwe GoldensteinBSA @ ART COPENHAGEN. THE NORDIC ART FAIRIn Collaboration with Galerie Wolfsen2012 Leo F. Demetz, Rudy Cremonini, Morten Andersen September 14 - 16 Gábor A. Nagy Rudy Cremonini Konstantin Déry Leo F. Demetz Adam Magyar Stepanek & Maslin Attila Szűcs Kinki Texas 2011 September 16 - 18 Gábor A. Nagy Adam Bota Konstantin Déry Deenesh Ghyczy Franziska Klotz Attila Szűcs Exhibition view art cph 11 & 12 
 A SORT OF HOMECOMING F. Klotz Collegium Hungaricum Berlin June 23 - September 15 2011 Gábor A. Nagy Franziska Klotz Curated by Uwe Goldenstein  Gábor A.Nagy - Detail from I Am Coming Home, 2011 HUNG(A)RY HEARTSHungarian Contemporary Art from Berlin Dr. Detlef Stein, Dr. József Czukor Embassy of Hungary Unter den Linden 76, Berlin Opening speech: Dr. József Czukor, Dr. Detlef Stein June 1 - August 31 2011 Gábor A. Nagy Adam Bota Konstantin Déry Deenesh Ghyczy Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view  Adam Bota - Sofa II, 2009, oil on canvas, 50×70cm YOUNG EUROPEAN LANDSCAPE After Déry. Photo by The Vision. Galerie Wolfsen Aalborg DK June 16 - August 6 2011 Collegium Hungaricum Berlin March 4 - May 22 2011 Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Interview deutschlandradio kultur Exhibition view Catalogue (engl.). Katalogtext auf deutsch  Konstantin Déry - Spiegelung, 2011, oil on canvas, 180×130cm, Private Collection, Aalborg DK René Holm Konstantin Déry Gábor A. Nagy Deenesh Ghyczy Simone Haack Anne Wölk Kinki Texas Alejandro Rodríguez-González Peter Hampel Franziska Klotz Mirjam Siefert Stepanek & Maslin Horst Waigel Svätopluk Mikyta Adam Bota Alberto Petrò Markus Wüste Steffi Stangl Adam Magyar Juan Béjar Jan Ros Jozsef Bullas Chelushkin Kirill Tibor Iski Kocsis Szilárd Cseke guest: Michael Kvium Inside The Weightless Space Of LandscapeLandscape appears in those cases where the spatial continuity and totality of observable reality is successfully fused with a highly reflected, individual experience of reality. Matthias Eberle (1980) Loneliness Shines. Malcolm Middleton The swinging child against a monochrome background on the cover of this catalogue (see below) points to the central idea of this unconventional exhibition of landscapes. The landscape fully disappears in the dark background, to the benefit of the figurative foreground. Furthermore, the motive is generated from a mosaic of letters that very subtly comments on the overall situation of a disorientated civilisation. The swinging movement of the child in front of a black emptiness symbolises an individual’s instability, detachment and incessant search for orientation — a search for the next and newest alignment within a limitless patchwork of signifying threads which offer neither a foothold, nor a centrally organised texture of meaning. Surrounding us is a permanent buzz of digitally processed images and slogans in vaguely meaningful contexts. We are inside a maelstrom of contingent information, and completely lacking the ability to evaluate it. As if we were ourselves part of Gábor A. Nagy’s painting and its particles of text, which seem like lonely, empty metaphors. We thus share the situation of the child sitting on the very edge, floating in front of nothingness. The brief moment of weightlessness experienced during swinging expresses a desire for detachment from our self-made, media-ridden environment. The black in the background could signify a new beginning, a new alignment — but likewise the end of a historically grown culture now in the process of overtaking itself.  COVER: Gábor A. Nagy - Choose Life, 2010, acrylics on canvas, 100×280cm The portrayal of landscape as a space of social representation may appear absurd and anachronistic in the face of a dissolving world. How to unite a borderless and technology-dominated world with the well-balanced genre of landscape painting, and its clearly defined rules? But it is precisely the formal and aesthetic underpinnings of the genre that provide a clear framework for the reception, coordination and mirroring of our present-day lifeworld, characterised not least by a confusing simultaneity of styles. Compared with the formal concept of the genre, the questioning and modification of spatial orders evident in contemporary representations of landscape offers impressive insights into metaphorically motivated shifts of meaning. Accordingly, this exhibition aims to expose the omnipresent signs of disorientation by focussing on artists’ handling of the image space. Into The Wild is the section of the exhibition focussing on wilderness as a utopian space, marked by a certain accommodation of post-romantic longings for oneness and unity with nature, but nonetheless indicative of irretrievably lost elixir of life. With fading dreams of archaic or romantic landscapes and the incessant expansion of urban environments, the self-evident understanding of nature as landscape has all but disappeared. Reality as experienced from the perspective of an urban environment is largely based on artificial, media-generated and thus systemically immanent images. And this situation threatens to lead into a condition of weightlessness, a permanent, nervous levitation. Eberle’s introductory quote offers a compelling art-historical definition of landscape. It takes the immediate and unmediated observation of landscape as point of departure for the individual interpretation to follow. Traditionally, nature is painted and embedded in a formal framework consisting of foreground, middle, and background, as Eberle indicates with the terms "spatial continuity" and "spatial totality". Caspar David Friedrich already questioned this trichotomy in 1808 by omitting the foreground in his Monk by the Sea. In the works presented here, the formal embedding of motives in different image layers seems to have become completely redundant. We experience landscape as a black surface, as in the case of Nagy, or in the hyperreal but far removed tree-motive by Tibor Iski Kocsis (see catalogue). The vanishing point, which serves to pull the layers of an image together in perspective, is absent in the visual order evoked by these artists. It is consciously surrendered for the benefit of a self-defined structure that defies the continuum of space: Anne Wölk’s version of nature (see catalogue) is one that obstructs the gaze, while Juan Béjar boldly quotes a pre-renaissance landscape (see below). Here, it seems as if the vanishing point has yet to be invented, and a world without a central perspective is subtly evoked. The unusual work is premised on a radical question: aren’t we on the verge of completely revaluating nature, which would necessitate a completely novel scheme, perhaps even an ahistorical viewpoint onto our fragmented present, which can no longer accommodate a single vanishing point, a centralised, totalitarian spatial order?  Juan Béjar - La Otra Mirada, 2008, oil on wood, 100×81cm In this sense, the protagonist in René Holm’s painting also seems to mourn the passing and flowing-away of his self (see his tab on this website). For Holm, the sublime experience of nature in a romantic forest setting ends in the negation of a positive experience of nature and death. Franziska Klotz’s impressionist portrait of a reindeer (see her tab on this website) visualises the utopian wilderness with colour particles, streaks, and overlapping layers of paint. Her open style plays with the projections and illusions inside the viewers’ imaginations, as they struggle to assemble the pieces into a single picture. Peter Hampel’s perspective of a flooded piece of untouched wilderness (see catalogue) confines nature to the scale of a minute detail. This pantheistic perspective, in which manifestations of God seem to occur only in small details, is fully dissolved in Horst Waigel’s instructions for a God trap (see his tab on this website). Akin to Juan Béjar or René Holm, cultural norms of interpretation are here revaluated and challenged with existential humour. Likewise, weightless glances into the sky — as proposed by Stepanek & Maslin (see their tab on this website) or Szilárd Cseke — point to a metaphysical homelessness. The romantic ideal of fusing with nature increasingly becomes an escapist retreat into a private world of desires. A disorientating experience, a lonely state of levitation, exactly as suggested by Jan Ros’ play of spotlights (see catalogue). And even a garden chair, a device for contemplation, is irreparably broken. Markus Wüste’s marble sculpture — in which the cheap material of the original has been turned into stone and thus elevated into a monument of our times — by its very weight detracts us from any thoughts of wanting to reassemble the chair (see catalogue). It is no coincidence that the artists in the exhibition were primarily born in the 1970s. Maybe this generation was the last one to have intensively experienced nature through immediate contact, and is thus able to explore the distance between humans and their natural environment with particular acuity. Formally, aesthetically and emotionally, these artists’ works can be seen as blending landscape or nature with their personal identity. The reference to young European landscape describes an attempt to redefine the cognitive premises of observing nature and landscape in the light of the European tradition of landscape painting. This tradition offers both an appropriate formal framework and an aesthetic retreat from which to behold the world with sufficient distance and from a truly human point of view. Uwe GoldensteinL O S T Galerie im Park, Bremen January 23 - May 1 2011 Franziska Klotz Anne Wölk Gábor A. Nagy Adam Bota Jens Thiele Alexander Tinei Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Ausstellungsinformationen Exhibition view  Alexander Tinei - Uncle R, 2008, oil on canvas, 100×80cm Sayonara, Nintendo. Stephen Jones aka Baby Bird Die Ausstellung LOST findet anlässlich der Romantik-Veranstaltungsreihe des Bremer Kulturensembles im Park statt. Ich möchte in diesem Zusammenhang sechs exzellente internationale Künstler von BSA - Berlin Selected Artists vorstellen, in deren Werken sich besonders eindringlich in figürlicher wie formalästhetischer Weise elementare Wesenszüge der bis heute wirkenden romantischen Befindlichkeit vorzeigen lassen. Die Fragestellung nach der heutigen Relevanz der Romantik eröffnet zwangsläufig eine Ambivalenz, die sich zwischen der Utopie einer individuell abgegrenzten, Natur bezogenen, harmonischen und intimen Realität auf der einen Seite und der Offenlegung von medial umgenutzten romantisierenden Strategien auf der anderen Seite bewegt. Mit den Termen Magie und Entzauberung möchte ich diese beiden Seiten, in denen die Rezeption der Romantik heute verwoben ist, ästhetisieren und mit den hoch reflektierten Bildwelten der sechs Künstler zum Vorschein bringen. In der Gesamtschau werden vielfältige Aspekte und Ideen anschaulich, die imstande sind, den Besucher, ganz im romantischen Sinne, vor den Kunstwerken zu bannen, um sich darin verlieren zu können. Der Ausstellungstitel LOST ist positiv zu verstehen, als Aufforderung zur Rückbesinnung auf unsere je eigenen, suggestiven Ideen und Sehnsüchte nach individueller Freiheit. Begrifflichkeiten wie des Sich-Verlierens, dem Streben nach der Einlösung der Identität in eine erhabene und artifiziell abgeschottete Welt sind in dieser Schau als Leitmotive für eine zeitgemäße romantische Orientierung zu verstehen. Die Künstler greifen in ihren ästhetischen Spiegelungen auf Motive des Rückzugs, des Abwesenden und auf Bildstrategien der Auflösung zurück und demonstrieren damit eine künstlerisch aufgehobene Distanzierung zur rein funktional geordneten Welt. Diese Zustände des Ichs beschreiben eine letztmögliche Gemütsverfassung, welche die Reste von romantischer Erfahrung in unserer völlig entgrenzten und sich endlos digital wiederholenden Welt ästhetisch aufzuheben vermag. Dementsprechend verlieren sich die Bildfiguren wie das betrachtende Auge in überschwänglichen Farben wie bei Franziska Klotz oder in hochgradig versperrten Bildebenen wie bei Anne Wölk. Die einsamen Männer am Einsertisch des jungen Wiener Malers Adam Bota werden von ihrer malerisch zerstreuten oder monochrom dunklen Umgebung umhüllt und unterstreichen die mentale Ablösung ihrer Anwesenheit zugunsten eines Hinübergleitens in einen unbewussten Zustand. Stark konstruierte Räumlichkeiten, wie sie in den Collagen von Jens Thiele erfahrbar werden, lassen die Bildfigur in einem sehr gespannten, narrativen oder vielleicht gar magischen Zustand wie in einer Zwischenwelt verharren. Die Bildnisse von Gábor A. Nagy lösen sich sogar in Schriftform auf und lassen den Betrachter gleichsam ver- wie entzaubert vor einer schwarzen Kulisse zurück. Der aus Moldawien stammende Alexander Tinei stellt seine Protagonisten in einer selbstreflexiven Pose dar, ihre verlaufenden Tatoos bezeichnen dabei sehr subtil die stetige Kraft und Omnipräsenz der Regression. Alle sechs Positionen verweisen also auf eine magische Atmosphäre der Auflösung, des Absinkens oder Suchens und münden zwangsläufig in die Dominanz des Unbewussten, die vielleicht die letzte Instanz bedeutet, die imstande ist, uns vor den endlos affirmativ flimmernden, entzauberten technischen Bildern zu schützen und somit eine wie auch immer geartete Form romantischer Wahrhaftigkeit erleben zu können. Uwe GoldensteinI'M NOT THERE Steffi Stangl. Photo by K.Turna Collegium Hungaricum Berlin September 17 - October 17 2010 Attlia Szűcs Steffi Stangl Alejandro R. González Deenesh Ghyczy Simone Haack Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view  S.Haack, A.Szűcs Die motivische Gebrochenheit und die Sicht nach innen spielt in dieser Schau die Wesensrolle. Die postromantische Utopie der Einheit von äußerer und innerer Realität wird in ihrer Spannung fassbar und im Gelage von An- und Abwesenheit spürbar. Die Künstler von I'm Not There deuten, wie im Ausstellungstitel schon angelegt, konsequent nach innen. Ihre Figuren ziehen sich ganz bewusst zurück, sind widerstrebend und oft allein, weltabgewandt, geheimnisvoll und suchend. Sie erscheinen fragil, auf sich selbst besinnend und vertrauen vollkommen ihrer Intuition. Damit erinnern sie an die in ihrer Vollkommenheit verlorene romantische Erfahrung. Denn sie sind stets von einem malerischen Schleier umhüllt oder in abstrahierte oder unscharfe Flächen eingebunden. Die visuelle Vereinigung findet allein im Malerischen statt und bleibt eine treibende Kraft, die ins Unbewusste verlagert ist. Dementsprechend lässt Attila Sz#369;cs seine Protagonisten fast immateriell in der Bildfläche erscheinen. Sie wirken auf den Betrachter wie Bekannte, sind aber gleichzeitig entrückt. In der Vermählung mit der wohl temperierten Farbfläche kehren sie nahezu unbemerkt ihre Latenz hervor. Die Harmonie aus Farben und Formen evoziert dabei eine verdichtete Atmosphäre, die uns zusammen mit den Anwesenden in ihre Welten absinken lässt. Deenesh Ghyczy stellt seine sich wiederholenden, mehrfach gebrochenen Figuren im Moment des freien Falls dar. Als würden sie durch ihre Fragmentarisierung in ihre eigene Abstraktion hineingleiten, fallen oder springen. Mit diesem Befreiungsakt verweist er auf den Augenblick als, im wörtlichen Sinne zu verstehenden Erfahrungsschatz, durch den jeder sich von fremden, äußeren Welten abgrenzen kann. Dies deutet auch seine aktuelle Werkserie bereits an: Mind out of Time. Simone Haacks unbetitelte Bildlandschaft zeugt von Unnahbarkeit und subtiler Präsenz. Ihre Aktfigur wirkt trotz ihrer Übergröße abwesend und in sich selbst versunken. Der Blick findet im verwegenen Gras und in der immer unschärfer werdenden Landschaft kaum Halt. Auch sie verweist vehement auf das Innenleben der nackten, unbeschützten und doch in sich gefassten und beruhigenden jungen Frau. Das Absinken im Gras liest sich wie eine Metapher der Undurchdringlichkeit der Seele, dessen Pfade sich nur durch die konsequente Besinnung auf das Innenleben beschreiten lassen. In den meisterhaften Gipstafeln von Alejandro Rodriguez Gonzalez tritt die fotorealistische Figur in flächig geöffneter, überlagerter Landschaft oder Architektur auf. Ihre mitunter überdeutlichen Gesichtszüge halten die Wahrnehmung momenthaft an und lassen die Blicke alsbald wieder entgleiten. Schwer fassbar, aber im diffusen Geschehen sich behauptend, vermitteln sie eine Zwischenwelt, die doch letztlich von der Gleichzeitigkeit des An- und Abwesenden geprägt ist. Symbolisch verstanden: Nur in der Melange aus Schärfe und Unschärfe beziehungsweise Augenblick und Projektion in eine narrative Vergangenheit oder Zukunft lässt sich so etwas wie Präsenz erfassen. So verwundert es nicht, dass stets der Schleier der Melancholie über die Arbeiten des Spaniers weht. Steffi Stangl nimmt gewissermaßen alle bis hierhin angedeuteten Gemütsverfassungen Spannungen und Illusionen auf und lässt sie in die Konzeption ihrer tollkühnen Maschine, Ballerina genannt (siehe Bild oben), einfließen. "Die Arbeit thematisiert den Moment der Irritation von Wahrnehmung: ein tatsächlich kinetisches Objekt erscheint dem Betrachter unbewegt. Über den physikalischen Zusammenhang einer Frequenzsynchronisation entsteht ein gefrorener Moment. Das Raumobjekt selbst markiert die Zone der Illusion. Es enthüllt und hält auf Abstand — und erzählt die bizarre Geschichte des Traums von der Überwindung der Schwerkraft. Der Schnittpunkt von Imagination und Wirklichkeit ist am Objekt fassbar: ein künstlich geschaffener Höhepunkt scheinbar ohne Zeit und Veränderung, die Ausdehnung des fixen Mittelpunktes der rastlosen Rotation." (S.S.) Die Künstler haben wunderbare symbolische Formen gefunden, um das Dilemma des wirklichen Gehalts der An- und Abwesenheit, also der Wahrnehmung, zu konkretisieren. Der Betrachter muss letztlich einsehen, dass, sobald er sein Selbst in Sicherheit wiegt, seine Erkenntnis zum Spuk mutiert. Die bleibende Einheit bleibt nur der Wunsch und findet, ganz im Sinne der gesamten Ausstellung, in Gedanken, im Abwesenden statt. Alle Künstler verweisen somit auf den Rückzug aus der banalen, systemimmanenten Welt durch das Stillstellen des Bewusstseins, das, gibt man sich den irrsinnigen Verlockungen der vorgefertigten und flimmernden Alltagsbilder hin, sich wie ein ständig nasser Schwamm über das Seelische legt und es zu durchtränken versucht. Eine Versöhnung lässt sich bei ihnen nur in der Durchschreitung und Respektierung ihrer Visionen und der Kritik am normativen Allerlei einlösen. Sie kann sich nur in der künstlerisch abgeschotteten Sphäre entfalten mit der konsequenten und sympathisch leisen Aufforderung zum Rückzug. So möchte ich Sie einladen, sich den großartigen Arbeiten der Künstler mit absoluter Ruhe hinzugeben. Denn auf die Kräfte der Intuition sollte man sich, von einem melancholischen Geist beseelt, doch stets verlassen können. Uwe GoldensteinI'M NOT THERE. Clip zur Ausstellung im CHB.  TRUE ROMANCE Galerie im Park, Bremen June 13 - August 29 2010 Simone Haack Attila Szűcs Alejandro Rodríguez-González Markus Wüste Mirjam Siefert Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Exhibition view  Markus Wüste - Plastic Bag, 2008, weißer Marmor, 38×27×6,5cm  Attila Szűcs - Figure with Box and Tree, 2008, oil on canvas, 240×190cm Wir schreiben das Jahr 1993. Quentin Tarantinos Drehbuch für das Roadmovie True Romance wird von Tony Scott verfilmt. Ein wahrhaft verliebtes Pärchen zieht ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste durchs Land. Nur ihre Liebe zählt. Das Drehbuch wird ein Jahr später von Oliver Stone im epochalen Werk Natural Born Killers wieder aufgenommen. Ein Feuerwerk von Schnitten und Überlagerungen umringt hier das killende Paar Juliette Lewis und Woody Harrelson. Aber sie behaupten sich, bis ins Groteske unerschütterlich. Ihre Liebe weiß sich den extremen Belastungen durch konsequentes Ausagieren zu behaupten. Analysiert man den Film nach seinen prägenden Bildern im Gewitter des mehrschichtigen Medien-Chaos, so fällt auf, dass die romantischen Motive aus unberührter Natur und stiller Sehnsucht immer wieder ins Geschehen drängen. Dazu singen Bob Dylan und Leonard Cohen melancholische Balladen. Die Quintessenz des Films deutet also auf die einzige Möglichkeit von authentischem Sein im Zusammenschweißen durch die romantische Liebe hin. Aber auch die ist natürlich eine Utopie und bleibt letztlich ein Zeichen im endlosen Meer an vorgefertigten medialen Animationen und künstlichen Gefühlssuggestionen. Meine These ist, dass in der engagierten zeitgenössischen Kunst diese romantische Utopie ein ungemein starker, wenn auch latenter zeitgeistlicher Lenker ist, der aus den künstlich übersättigten Motiven der Medien und der postmodernen Entgrenzung der ewig verweisenden Kontexte einen symbolischen Ausweg weist. In dieser Ausstellung möchte ich vehement diese Möglichkeit des Sich-Widersetzens gegen die allgegenwärtige mediale Umnutzung durch wohl kalkulierte und sehr eindringliche Bilder vorzeigen, die auch in Natural Born Killers tragend sind. Im Gegensatz zu den o.g. filmischen Akteuren deuten die Künstler dieser Ausstellung allerdings konsequent nach innen. Statt sich den Weg freizuschießen, ziehen sich ihre Bildfiguren zurück, sind widerstrebend und oft allein, weltabgewandt, geheimnisvoll und suchend. Fragil, auf sich selbst besinnend und vertrauen - ganz im romantischen Sinn — vollkommen ihrer Intuition. Dabei sind sie stets von einem malerischen Schleier umhüllt. Der Partner fehlt, eine True Romance lässt sich nach ihren Konzepten nicht realisieren aber bleibt gleichzeitig eine treibende Kraft, die ins Unbewusste verlagert ist. Sie verweisen auf den Rückzug aus der banalen, systemimmanenten Welt durch das Stillstellen des Bewusstseins, das, gibt man sich den irrsinnigen Verlockungen der vorgefertigten und flimmernden Alltagsbilder hin, sich wie ein ständig nasser Schwamm über das Seelische legt und es zu durchtränken versucht. Die wahre Romantik kann sich ihrer Ansicht nach also nur in der künstlerischen Sphäre entfalten mit der konsequenten und sympathisch leisen Aufforderung zum mentalen Rückzug. Denn auf die Kräfte der Intuition sollte man sich, vom romantischen bzw. melancholischen Geist beseelt, doch stets verlassen können. Uwe GoldensteinTHE UNIVERSE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, BABEDeák Erika Galeria, BudapestApril 9 - May 6 2010 Menno Aden Jessica Buhlmann Steffi Stangl Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Unusual perspectives are opened by Menno Aden's photographic works, painter Jessica Buhlmann's dissolving spaces and object-artist Steffi Stangl's entrancing apparatuses. Together, these three young Berlin-based artists propose a remarkable re-negotiation of the abstract-concrete relationship, as well as shedding light on possible orientation strategies in a world obscured and distorted by visual overload. Theirs is a concentrated regard on the present that opposes a purely affirmative acceptance of reality. Contemplation, that almost forgotten virtue, here works to expose inside, often concealed relationships; a strictly defined artistic space alludes to the model-like world we inhabit. Thus the combined effect of these works is to direct our view onto a world-space that is at once symbolic and so immediate it cannot be ignored. It is an understanding of space in which, as we shall see, infinity itself finds its place - an infinite, metaphysical non-place which these three artists all refer to in distinctly different ways.
The View From The Universe Into Itself Thus Menno Aden's depopulated Space-Portraits show a familiar world from a utopian, universal perspective, that is to say steeply from above. In these well-rehearsed yet eerily alienating situations, our habitual modes of perception are placed into question and can no longer be taken for granted. Both public and private space are generalised in a factual, systematic order, which affords a view of reality as a simple, generic constellation. Space is shown from a sublime, elevated position, while at the same time we are trapped in it; an initially dominant and powerful perspective eventually transforms itself into a fragile mental state verging on loneliness. 
Jessica Buhlmann - Lake, 2009, oil on canvas, 190×155cm The Universe In My Mind By contrast, Jessica Buhlmann explores the maximum degree of abstraction of specifically defined spaces. We simultaneously perceive a landscape or architectural motive and its geometric abstraction. Her abstract, fragmented painting oscillates between a pure play of colour and attempted self-integration as landscapes are discovered and interior spaces open. The viewer likewise finds herself projecting onto different layers, thereby making her way back into her own self. The back-and-forth movement between a landscape that eventually reveals itself to be projected interiority and then dissolve anew leads into an interminable movement.  Steffi Stangl - Sandumwälzmaschiene (Detail), 2009, 50×65×180cm The Universe As A Schopenhauer Move Steffi Stangl's kinetic apparatuses take the form of closed circuits that exemplify the world as an endless functional system, punctuated by an occasional rattling and the surfacing of what are actually invisible forces; in this way, Stangl also lets chance play its part. In an agreeable, at times melancholic manner, her objects thus come to symbolise the inevitable linear progression of time. Just like clockworks, the trickling of sand or the simulated falling and resurrection of matter suggests the endlessly wound-up springs of consciousness that account for the world's innermost cohesion. All three artists thus focus strongly on those deep-down energies that inform our perception of world-space. In doing so, they subtly refer to the functioning of the world, casting it in a qualitative form that in its finality ultimately even trumps the universe as our furthermost point-of-flight and poetic claim to infinity. For this universe - here understood to be an expansion of our dreams and worldly limitations and thus an innerworldly space - now becomes an abstract idea, a utopia, which one can only befriend by turning inwards. It is ultimately just one part of our phantasmagorical self, in so far as we understand our consciousness as a hermetically sealed, self-referential space, within which the world exists as ceaseless self-reflection. Uwe Goldenstein"The Universe Is Not Your Friend, Babe" |
