January 2018 Out of the collection Daniel Harms, Yasam Sasmazer, A.R. Penck, Ulrich Riedel, Jonathan Meese, Sebastian Schrader, Ugur Güler & Stephan Balkenhol Daniel Harms Daniel Harms - Totem, 2013, acrylic and chalk on canvas, 250 x 350 cm Daniel Harms was born in Hamburg in 1980 and he is currently living and working in Berlin. His large format paintings are combining subjects from various inspirations: extrapolated daily life event or episodes of his own history within the context of his hometown, Hamburg. He also developed a strong interest for the states of alienation. Inspired by the powerful visual language of the artists group Die Brücke, his existential paintings are characterized by luminous, colourful and rich combination of symbolic figures and elements. Harms has reached an international recognition and has been exhibited in numerous shows along with artists such as Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, A.R. Penk and H.R Giger.
Yasam Sasmazer left: Yasam Sasmazer - Captured by Light, 2012, patinated bronze, ed. 3/7, 42 x 18 x 12 cm right: Yasam Sasmazer - Shooter, 2013, patinated bronze, ed. 6/7, 43 x 15 x 16 cm Yasam Sasmazer was born in Istanbul in 1980. She received her MA in Sculpture from the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul. In her work, she uses the human psyche, in its dark or bright side, as her main site of investigation. With her realistic sculptures, she questions in turn the notions of identity, doppelganger, the self & the other, the individual within the social or natural environment, willingly deconstructing the clichés and cultural structures that surround these ideas. In her current works she deals with the specific relationship between mankind and nature focusing on its contradictions and malfunctions, which lead her observations to the themes of invasion, decay, ruins, remembrance and transience of memories. Sasmaser s works have been exhibited worldwide in various institutions, galleries, biennials and art fairs such as Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA, USA), Positions (Berlin), Contemporary Istanbul (Istanbul), Scope (New York and Basel) or the Xingjiang Biennial (Urumuqi, China). They can be found in many private and public collections such as Koç Collection (Istanbul, TR) and Olbricht Collection (Berlin, Essen, DE). Jonathan Meese Jonathan Meese - Das Kindermädchen Fräulein Daddy, 2004-5, Mixed media on canvas, 180 x 180 cm Jonathan Meese is a German artist born 1970 in Tokyo (JP). He lives and works in Berlin. His works include paintings, drawings, installations, sculpture and performance. He uses collage methods and integrates objects, like posters, pictures, writings. His pictures are created with a focus on German and world history including its main figures, while assembling their playful and violent aspects, but also ancestral mysteries, science-fiction heroes and his own mythologies. Combining references, his art is difficult to categorize, but he is definitely considered as being in the line of the German expressionists.
A.R. Penck A.R. Penck - Ostmann - Westfrau, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 80 cm A.R. Penck is a German painter who was born in 1939 in Dresden and died in 2017 in Zurich (CH). His large paintings integrate a wide variety of colored signs, symbols, chimeras and other exotic figures and rites, all the while exhaling a great primitive force. Inventor of the famous Standard style aiming for a radicalization and formalization of painting (Systembild), he is, together with Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Sigmar Polke oder Jörg Immendorff, a representant of German painting and one of the major artists of the XXth Century. Ulrich Riedel Ulrich Riedel - Politikos Despos, 2017, varnished wood, 266 x 60 cm Ulrich Riedel was born in Berlin in 1979. He received his master education at the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) in 2009 and was a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts of UdK in 2012. Following the tradition of minimal art, Riedel uses industrial means of production as well as seriality in his works. With his large format sculptures, he plays with perspective, blurring the lines between 2- and 3-dimensionality. Riedel s works are exhibited worldwide in various institutions, galleries, biennials and art fairs such as Biennale RicCAA 13 (Padua, IT), Kunstverein Würzburg (Würzburg, DE), Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Trier e. V. (Trier, DE), Positions (Berlin, DE), Contemporary Istanbul (Istanbul, TR), P/ART (Hamburg, DE), Art Karlsruhe or C.A.R Contemporary Art, (Karlsruhe, DE).
Sebastian Schrader Sebastian Schrader - Fragment, 2009, oil on canvas, 250 x 180 cm Sebastian Schrader - Versteck, 2009, oil on canvas, 250 x 180 cm Sebastian Schrader was born in 1978 in Berlin. His paintings, mainly oil on canvas, are firmly set in the central Europe painting tradition, within its use of color and light; a tradition which is gently disturbed by the distortions and transformations of the uncertain state of an in-between transition. Schrader grounds his work exactly on the in-between thematic, which became his particularity, his trademark. The dynamism of his compositions and the high quality of his line combined with trivial existential and melancholic themes, make him one of the most important upcoming voices in Germany. Uğur Güler Uğur Güler - Deccal, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 225 cm Ugur Güler is a young Turkish artist living in Ankara and working with hyperrealist paintings, mainly on the concepts of the good and the bad. Through his paintings, the artist asks the question How can we be so stubborn to live and win, even if we know that there is nothing but death at the end. He has been dealing, in his critical approach, with subjects such as death and violence, the good and the bad, from a philosophical point of view, to be seen, for example, in his series Sweet Life.
Stephan Balkenhol Stephan Balkenhol - Mann mit grauen Haaren, 2003 painted wood, 166 x 24.5 x 23.5 cm Stephan Balkenhol is a contemporary German artist known for his painted statues of the human form. The artist s totem-like sculptures of everyday people, are reminiscent of both folk art as well as medieval sculpture. The artist uses a variety of woods, including poplar and Douglas fir, and crafting each work from single blocks using hammers, power saws, and chisels. Figurative sculpture is often misused as a bearer of messages, Balkenhol reflected. In my vision my sculptures become a question, a mirror. And it is the viewer who fills it with meaning. Born on February 10, 1957 in Fritzlar, Germany, Balkenhol attended the Hamburg School of Fine Arts from 1976 1982, where he was taught by Nam June Paik and Sigmar Polke. In a response to the abstract and conceptual practices that he was introduced to, the artist decided to concentrate on the figure a quotidian, everyday persona, instead of an idol. He currently lives and works between Meisenthal, France, and Karlsruhe, Germany. Balkenhol s works are held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. BERLINARTPROJECTS Potsdamer Str. 61 10785 Berlin +49 (0) 30 240876060 www.berlinartprojects.com hello@berlinartprojects.com