dépendance Opposite The Other Side
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Sommer Contemporary Art continues with the tradition of ‘Gallery Swaps’ which was held for the first time in 2002. As part of this series of exhibitions, the gallery has invited and has been invited by leading galleries in Europe and the USA, including Sadie Coles HQ (London), Galerist (Istanbul), Modern Institute (Glasgow), Lehmann Maupin (New York) and Peter Kilchmann (Zurich).

For this current exhibition we have invited dépendance gallery from Brussles, to present a group exhibition of their artists.

Opposite the Other Side seeks to expose the Israeli audience to the contemporary art scene in Europe, and will include works by prominent and intriguing artists such as Thomas Bayrle, Josef Strau and Linder, along with younger generation of artists like Noa Giniger, Christian Flamm, Oscar Tuazon and other artists who are working in a variety of mediums and materials.

Thomas Bayrle (b. 1937, Germany) creates collages, paintings, sculptures, films and books in a unique visual language, influenced by mass media and minimalism. Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, USA) is confronting between sculptural approaches, the history of architecture and performance. In the work on display in this exhibition, he poured these medium values into the practice of drawing. With a mediated vision, Will Benedict (b. 1978, USA) is exploring the gaze about painting versus photography. In The sorrow the Joy Brings, a diminutive collage made by Noa Giniger (b. 1977, Israel), the young artist examines the intricacies of melancholy, by her desire to quite literally “lift the spirits” of a weeping willow. Josef Strau (b. 1957, Ausrtia) investigates the origins of text and subjectivity in a variety of writing styles which merges the diaristic, the theoretical, and the fictional. Lucie Stahl’s (b. 1977, Germany) imagery is an endless abyss, with no discernible order, dimensionless space of information. In her works, Stahl establishes this space quite literally, by including trenchant and often slapstick fragments of text in her compositions. Michaela Meise (b. 1967, Germany) deals with questions of identity and connections of culture, history, and gender, through an inquiry of the structure and construction inherent in materials and objects. Christian Flamm (b. 1974, Germany) explores his personal relationship with collective imagery. His computer generated images of canvases are charged with emotion. The suggestive openness of his works provokes the spectator to project their wishes, fantasies, and memories onto them. Michaela Eichwald’s (b.1967, Germany) formal language of abstraction, with its often muddy palette and roughly textured surfaces, echoes European Informal painting of the 1950’s, but her use of unconventional materials such as pleather instead of canvas is extremely contemporary. These elements can be also found in the works of Sergej Jensen (b. 1973, Denmark). The young and promising artist examines the borders of material and minimalistic painting, while integrating a variety of fabrics, from burlap and linen to silk and wool. Linder (B. 1954, England) creates her sharp collages out of images taken from the mainstream commercial world of popular culture, fusing symbols of capitalism, sexuality, violence, feminism, desire, and morbidity into her work.

In the project room we will screen the video work Untitled (Heat up the Nickle), by Peter Wächtler (b. 1979, Germany). In the center of the plot there is a desperate male character which refers to the one in Van Gogh’s famous work Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate). The desperation as a motif in Wächtler’s works and texts appear also in this short animated movie, and evokes questions regarding the creation of narratives. Dense with words rather than images, the film hints towards the artist’s consistently productive output: writing.