THEN AND NOW

(Auszug aus dem Text von Juriaan Benschop)

The curator’s hand in this exhibition appears to be minimal, at first glance. The works have been put together by someone with a clear appreciation for reduced and balanced forms, abstract in appearance. There is no painted line or metal strip or gesture too much – it is all contained. Yet there are five quite different artists at work, each with their own motivations leading to their reduced visual languages. As the title of the show indicates, there are at least two different moments in time involved – a past and a present – so there might indeed be a traceable development.

A minimal approach in the art-historic sense would imply that the form of the sculpture or painting would create the actual meaning, and that there would be no need to look for references outside the artworks themselves. There would also be no storytelling involved, and no symbolism attached to what is offered. Is this the case with these five artists? Are their abstract visual languages indeed self-sufficient, or should we connect them to things or thoughts outside the works?

The exhibition spans the work of three generations of British artists, the oldest being Barbara Hepworth, who was born in 1903 and passed away in 1975, the youngest Rebecca Warren, born in 1965 and currently working in London. Within this course of time, quite a few notions in the arts have changed, including what the meaning of abstraction is and what attitude an artist has towards minimalism or constructivism or any other kind of ‘ism’. This exhibition is presented in our current time of multiple-ism, one could say, with no claims on truth given to a single style. In this sense, the exhibition offers more than the works of five artists: it challenges viewers to see how a certain modern art vocabulary and way of thinking has developed throughout the years. Is that vocabulary still relevant?

Mit Werken von Anthony Caro, Barbara Hepworth, Bridget Riley, Edmund de Waal und Rebecca Warren.

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Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, im Vertrieb der Holzwarth Publications