Reise ans Mittelmeer Group Show

Buchmann Galerie is pleased to announce the exhibition Journey to the Mediterranean Sea with works by Daniel Buren, Balthasar Burkhard and Jason Martin.

The works of the three artists, working in different media, take viewers on an associative journey to the sea.

Since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's stays in Italy between September 1786 and May 1788 and his travel diaries, written between 1813 and 1817, or Johann Gottfried Seume's travels through (Southern) Europe at the beginning of the 19th century and their media treatment in the form of his popular books, the transfiguration of the Mediterranean region north of the Alps has begun. The works in the exhibition create an echo chamber of this European dream, of the often utopian transfigured place of the Mediterranean.

The exhibition invites the viewer to trace the subtle references to this place of longing in the works of the participating artists - although it should remain open whether these are intentional or occur through the interpretation of the viewer.

Daniel Buren's work Westwind consists of 6 narrow long flags, woven with the famous 8.5cm wide white stripes that make the French artist's work unmistakable and with which he revolutionized painting in the late 1960s. Moved by fans, they flutter gently in the wind.

This vent d'ouest becomes figurative in Balthasar Burkhard's photographic work Himmel (Sky): darkly brooding clouds cover the entire picture surface. Without a horizon line and working with strong contrasts of bright white to dark black, Burkhard brings the work to the edge of legibility.
The second work is a wave dissolving in the spray. Sibylline in their ambivalence toward the sea and nature, these black-and-white photographs on baryta paper by the Swiss photographer, who died in 2010, have an air of serenity. The image of sea spray in coarse-grained black and white is reminiscent of Gustave Courbet's paintings of breaking waves, such as Die Woge (The Wave) from 1869 in the Städel collection. Here, the natural force of the sea appears, which, for all its idyll, also harbors danger.

With their refined colors, sensual textures, and confident facture, the polychrome works of the British painter Jason Martin, who has studios in London and Portugal, appear at first to reflect mainly on painting itself. The surface of the painting Untitled (Mixed white/Brilliant yellow deep/Caribbean blue) was treated by the artist with custom-made brushes in such a way that the spatial impression of a wave may be created. Together with the delicate works on paper, whose colors evoke the water, the sand and the blazing sun, a tableau of the manifold sensual impressions of the Mediterranean Sea opens up.

With generous support by Stiftung Kunstfonds / Neustart Kultur.

For more information, please contact the gallery at any time.