Springtime at the Scottsdale, Arizona Walmart Turns Commercial Landscapes into Sites of Nostalgic Mundanity @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Known for his paintings of man-made and natural landscapes, Jake Longstreth depicts American suburban and rural scenes with a clarity that is at once disquieting and subtly humorous. Devoid of human presence and bathed in perpetual midday light, these landscapes – among them American big box stores and chain restaurants – draw out a poetry of the everyday with a surprising warmth and painterly affection. Though American commercial developments may be considered a crass or ugly subject matter, Longstreth’s sunny neutrality underscores the fact that most Americans find them neither bleak nor remarkable. So ubiquitous that they are rarely truly seen, the stores and restaurants depicted in these compositions comprise a 21st-century version of the American commons. Longstreth encourages us to linger, be still, look. We might ask ourselves: What has become of these landscapes? What will become of them? Beyond the signature quietude of Longstreth’s landscapes, this body of work underscores the artist’s astute observation of landscapes in transformation. Revealed from unusual vantage points, tenderly rendered wildflowers, foliage, and trees cast dappled shadows on their surroundings, literally and metaphorically throwing into relief the cultivated domain that surrounds them.

Springtime at the Scottsdale, Arizona Walmart, is on view through March 2nd at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 15/16, Berlin.

Günther Förg's Diverse Utopia-Critical Body of Work Dissected @ Galerie Max Hetzler

 
 

Günther Förg’s comprehensive and multidisciplinary oeuvre, which spans five decades, includes painting, drawing, and murals, as well as sculpture and photography. The focus is on material, color, and space. The artist's experimental approach to abstraction and monochrome painting was directed against the trend toward figuration that prevailed in Germany in the 1980s. His works made continuous reference to 20th-century modernism, whose utopia he critically questioned. In this context, he engaged with art movements as diverse as early modernism, referencing artists such as Edvard Munch, or the American abstract expressionists including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Cy Twombly. Elements of conceptual art can also be found throughout Förg’s work, which additionally challenge traditional interpretations.

Günther Förg is on view through February 24th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, Berlin.

Paul McCarthy Continues to Define the Language of the Obscene in Them as Was Is @ Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin

Bringing together past and present, then and now, Them as Was Is, Paul McCarthy’s first solo exhibition with Galerie Max Hetzler, presents two fundamental aspects of McCarthy’s practice. On the ground floor, eighteen sculptures constitute an early endeavour by the artist to combine different periods of sculpture into one, allowing visitors to draw out the similarities that weave together his most iconic sculptural projects. On the gallery’s upper floor, a series of drawings and video works from the artist’s more recent ‘A&E’ (2019–) project show film and performance to be at the heart of McCarthy’s practice.

The gallery’s second floor presents drawings created by McCarthy during improvised performances between himself and German actress Lilith Stangenberg as part of their ongoing ‘A&E’ project. The project’s title refers to the layered alter egos which McCarthy and Stangenberg assume: Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun, Adam & Eve, Arts & Entertainment, America & Europe. Created during hours-long sessions in which the collaborators enter a state of delirium, the drawings possess a radical immediacy and undeniable physicality. Alongside unconscious scrawls, magazine clippings, and imagery of Hitler and Mickey Mouse, certain drawings incorporate the artist’s tools, providing witness to the gestures embedded in them.

 
 

Them as Was Is is on view through October 21st at Galerie Max Hetzler, Potsdamer Straße 77-87, Berlin.

Toby Ziegler's Spontaneous Gestures Collide with Acts That Abstract & Render Simultaneously @ Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris

Toby Ziegler's fourth solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, Blind men exploring the skin of an elephant, brings together a range of recent works exploring the connections between figuration and abstraction, control and intuition, and manual and digital means of production. The disruption of established systems and the troubling fractures at play within the circulation of images are central themes in the artist’s recent production.

The title of the exhibition refers to an old Indian parable, transcribed in the work of Hokusai, in which blind men are depicted petting different parts of an elephant, each believing it to be another distinct animal. The tale relates to the idea that each person defends their own belief as being absolute, based on their own limited subjectivity, regardless of the experience of others. To imagine the animal objectively, as a whole, would only be possible by merging these various perceptions.

In Ziegler’s work, the original image springs out of a similar disorder, with figurative elements and motifs subtracted, aggregated or enhanced via personal references. As in the Indian fable, multiple small, distinct elements are united to form one coherent whole. Ziegler’s creative process is sometimes one of incremental ‘figuration’ and sometimes one of abstraction, with different starting points but the same destination. His aim is to make work that self-consciously functions as both figurative and abstract at the same time. It involves the dismantling and deconstruction of imagery drawn from a variety of sources, adding or subtracting elements such as figurative details and patterns.

Blind men exploring the skin of an elephant is on view through July 29 at Galerie Max Hetzler Paris 46 & 57 Rue du Temple.

The Yellow Light at 6pm @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Left to right: Günther Förg, Vivian Suter
Installation view: Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 23 June – 19 August 2023
Courtesy the artists and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London, Photo: def image 

Galerie Max Hetzler explodes into colorful, ethereal questioning with a group show featuring work by Darren Almond, Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Sarah Crowner, Carroll Dunham, Hedwig Eberle, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Katharina Grosse, Alex Israel, Melike Kara, Alex Katz, Friedrich Kunath, Beth Letain, Jake Longstreth, Tal R, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, David Schutter, Sean Scully, Ben Sledsens, Mònica Subidé, Vivian Suter, Liliane Tomasko, Tursic & Mille, Rinus Van de Velde, Grace Weaver, Emma Webster, and Toby Ziegler.

Despite Cézanne’s insistence that the world, with all its strangeness, only becomes present, comprehensible and recognizable in images, the onset of modernity initiated a disappearance of nature and landscape in the course of a rational logic of progress. Matisse, Munch or Klee were already only able to preserve them in pictorial form. With 30 individual views on landscape and nature, the group exhibition das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags (the yellow light at 6pm) maps out the hazy mosaic of a frail present: whether as a melancholic reminiscence of man-made devastation, a stoic contemplation of the fragile fabric of everyday life or a daring invention of an uncertain future yet to come.

The work is largely without people. Yet, as the exhibition title, a line of poetry by the late Rolf Dieter Brinkmann suggests, we, looking and empathizing, are ourselves the missing human reference. For the question of how we want to fit into the world arises again and again.

the yellow light at 6pm (das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags) is on view until August 19th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, 10623 Berlin