26 Jun 2009

Armin Boehm & Anita Di Bianco at Kunstverein Braunschweig

ARMIN BOEHM
Der Böse Blick / The Evil Eye

June 27–August 30, 2009

In his portraits, interiors, and landscapes, Berlin-based artist Armin Boehm [*1972] uses a technique in which he combines media such as glaze, drippings, metal dust, and thickly applied oil. He initially formulates his pictorial elements in natural coloration. Layer by layer the palette becomes darker. Ultimately, only isolated sparks of shimmering color attest to the polychrome ground.

Yet Armin Boehm's works are not only multilayered in terms of form; their content is just as profound, indeed ambiguous. Because the painting process—a constant adding and eliminating—is, as it were, also a mirror of his interest in presence and absence, the material and the metaphysical, the figurative and transcendence and their transitions. It is precisely these scientific and human intermediate states that Boehm examines in his pictorial work: it is about border zones on the line between science and parascience, religion and occultism.

Boehm's interiors are sometimes inspired by ritually charged spaces; the models for his landscape paintings are aerial views of military bases, terror camps, or research centers. The artist pursues mathematical and physical phenomena in his depictions of planetary space—comets or constellations. One even encounters central figures from the field of astronomy in his portraits, a discipline in which the fundamental metaphysical interest of scientific research reveals itself in a particularly lucid way.

As of late, Boehm's works have increasingly included abstract forms as well. Geometric shapes out of metal foil have in part been integrated into his paintings and lend many of them an almost alchemistic appearance; now and then, abstract pictures also develop within the context of figurative series. Another one of his concerns is to expose the connection between the art of modernity and spiritualism. Because when established religions became less important within the scope of the avant-garde's process of secularization in the early twentieth century, parareligious, occult, and esoteric teachings became all the more influential. Theosophy and anthroposophy, for example, also exercised a great amount of influence on the development of abstract art. An aspect that has fallen into oblivion which Boehm's works look into in a subtle way.

A comprehensive catalogue (German/English) is being published on the occasion of the exhibition that includes an interview with Sarah Frost as well as contributions by Martin Engler, Gregor Jansen, Veit Loers, Gabriele Sand, and Hilke Wagner. ISBN 978-3-940953-20-9


ANITA DI BIANCO
Ghostwriter

June 27–August 30, 2009

The American artist Anita Di Bianco (*1970 in New York) works with film, video, and print media. Her short films pursue strategies of the restaging of works by well-known writers such as Winfried Georg Sebald or Gertrude Stein and in this way destabilize the notion of inviolable authorship. The text selection is analytical, the images purist: Di Bianco's remakes make hidden structures visible and open up new avenues of interpretation. The artist's most recent works—'Com Viet' (2008) as well as the two-channel video installation of the films 'Du rêve et des drogues' and 'Ballad in Plain D' with the title 'Der Versteller' (2007)—will be shown at the exhibition in the Kunstverein's 'Remise'.


Opening of both exhibitions: Friday, June 26, 2009, at 7:00 p.m.

Artist Talk with Armin Boehm: Thursday, August 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Artist Talk with Anita Di Bianco: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:00 p.m. (in English)