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Back to the Figure – Contemporary Painting
The unique exhibition presents eighty national and international artists as a response to the boom in figurative painting on the art market over the last few years. The exhibition focusses on the exploration of the human figure,‘figuration’ in this context does not include still life or landscape painting.With respect to the selection of the exhibits the deciding factor was not the artist’s age but the date of the origin of the painting itself. The works shown were all painted after the year 2000. The result is a kaleidoscope of contemporary art, providing a first critical overall view of figuration in the beginning of the 21st century.The curators of the exhibition are Dr Christiane Lange, director of the Hypo-Kunsthalle since March 2006, and Dr Florian Matzner, professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich. The works, a total of around 120, are subdivided by different chapters, such as objective-magical-surreal, pop-crossover-subculture or portrait. The composition of the exhibits clearly shows which genres and lines of tradition are important for contemporary painting. One particular attraction of the exhibition is the dialogue between the different generations of artists.‘Old masters’ such as Lucian Freud, Eric Fischl, Mel Ramos, Alex Katz and Maria Lassnig as well as young stars of the scene like Neo Rauch, Jenny Saville, John Currin and Glenn Brown are on show, to name but a few. Furthermore visitors should be encouraged to explore ‘new artists’.
Although the two main themes of modern art, namely abstraction and figuration, have always been running parallel to one another, there have been countless times when the latter has been pronounced dead and gone. The title of the exhibition,‘Back to the Figure’, does not indicate a return, certainly not a regression, to models which have been handed down from the past. On the contrary, it is intended to encourage reflection as to whether there is a feeling of insecurity in society today which has triggered the current trend towards figuration, analogous to the retour à l’ordre of the 1920s.
2nd June – 13th August 2006
Flyer
Accompanying Events (in German)
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