Opening: Friday, October 10, 7 p.m. A catalogue will be published. Kate Waters: The Poetry of the Commonplace By David Galloway Once upon a time, in centuries now past, the museum was a cherished place of contemplation, far from the hustle and bustle of the city: what William Butler Yeats termed "a still point in a turning world". In our own day, it is the museum that turns, whirls and even dervishes, with blockbuster exhibitions and beery “long nights” attracting a new, sensation-seeking public. However one estimates such developments, the fact remains that the museum as an institution has long been in a state of profound transition. Kate Waters explores this metamorphosis in her sumptuous painting "Getting Used to the Twenty-first Century" (2008). Her title makes reference to an age when information accumulates at a dizzying and sometimes dismaying pace, affecting every single aspect of life. The sheer speed of communication means that, like the Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, we have to run very fast just to stand still. Among the consequences of this acceleration are seismic changes in the way art is produced and consumed. Ironically, the monumental work before which visitors are standing in Waters' composition is Jacques Louis David's "Coronation of Napoleon", painted at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century and itself the symbol of a period of drastic change. In David's carefully staged composition, onlookers stand in the foreground, as they do in Waters' painting. Two of the modern witnesses are attentive, while others have turned away, as though rejecting the past – or merely ignoring it. Undaunted by their sumptuous surroundings, they have entered the hallowed halls of the Louvre with a baby carriage. The times, indeed, are a-changing. The layering of narrative levels here is given a finishing touch by anyone who stands before the Waters composition. We, the contemporary viewers, are watching museum visitors viewing make-believe courtiers viewing a coronation ceremony that itself was a charade. (A century later, the wedding of Yves Klein would push such theatricality to extremes of absurdist pomp, as would the unintentionally comic investitures of numerous self-proclaimed monarchs.) While reflecting on the shifting mandate of the museum, Waters' picture also offers a metaphor for change in a far broader sense. There are several earlier paintings in which the artist explores the museum (and painting itself) as metaphor. In most of them, tourists are pictured turning away from the masterpieces on view. In "Day Dream Boy" (2006), too, the central figure looks away from a "heavenly" subject to dream his own dream of paradise. The camera-toting museumgoers in "Hareem" (2007) are portrayed with their backs turned to a Delacroix painting, yet there is also a feeling that they are emerging from the canvas itself. As the artist herself phrases it, "Perhaps we are witnessing youth's pipe dreams, tumbling out of the painting into reality". Dream and illusion are, indeed, among her recurrent themes, which also include nostalgia, patriotism, friendship, the clash of cultures, family, communication and estrangement, the private and the public spheres. Above all, this is an oeuvre concerned with perception: with how the individuals portrayed here perceive themselves and their surroundings and how viewers, from their own voyeuristic standpoint, perceive the same. It is hardly surprising that the museum and the street are recurrent settings for Waters, since they provide permanently shifting stages on which the comédie humaine is played out in all its infinite variety. Even those works set in the more intimate spaces of bars or restaurants – the richly ironic "Patriots and Guinea Pigs" (2007), for example, or the warmly intimate "Chop Suey" (2008) – treat the available pictorial space as a mini-stage. To deepen the theatrical metaphor, one might see the David painting in "Getting Used to the Twenty-first Century" as a kind of play within a play - a device famously used by Hamlet "to catch the conscience of the king". In the works of Kate Waters, too, one often has the feeling of catching players unawares, of their postures or glances revealing more than they realize. Rarely do the participants communicate directly, as they seem to do in "Chop Suey", even though the picture formally echoes Edward Hopper's painting of the same title, where two women seem cocooned by silence. In another Hopperesque work, "The Forbidden City" (2005), we see two couples on a night out, but they are plainly more interested in food than romance or conversation. Perhaps the most common player in these urban dramas is, quite simply, the "passerby". What helps to dispel the sense of isolation and loneliness suggested by many of these works are their rich coloration and a luminescence that sometimes has the vividness of stained-glass windows. "Bond Street" (2008) is perhaps an exception, for the warm colors are associated with the romantic puffery of the wedding industry, while in the "real" world a solitary figure moves through cool, bluish shadow. Kate Waters has spoken of the scene in terms of the films of Alfred Hitchcock. (Other works, with their "innocent" picnics and parades, draw close to the aesthetic of David Lynch.) Indeed, many of the scenes depicted suggest a film still – a fragment of a narrative, a "harmless" moment that nonetheless seems redolent with foreboding. Despite the modern dress of its actors and the Technicolor glow of the scene, "Hell's Kitchen" (2004) bears unmistakable affinities to the chilling carnival episode in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train". "Hell's Kitchen" is hardly the only work in which Waters treads a thin line between the playful and the sinister. "This painting", she notes, "is simultaneously about leisure, freedom, and enjoyment on the one hand, but also about fear, paranoia, gunshots flying around one's ears, running for cover". Implicitly, the war in Iraq is the lens through which many of the artist's recent compositions must be seen. Or the bloody riots in the banlieus of Paris that hover behind the bright and seemingly innocent "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (2008). In Roald Dahl's famous short-story collection Kiss Kiss, it is precisely this mixture of innocence and horror that proves so mesmerizing. One is tempted at times to think of these works not so much in terms of the painterly tradition of photo-realism and more as a kind of photo-surrealism. What Neo Rauch accomplishes through distorted proportions and historical incongruities is realized here through a subtle poetry of the commonplace. Yet one should take care not to overemphasize the psychological innuendos and the political perspectives implicit in such works. Obviously the particular moment recorded in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was also chosen because of its painterly potential, including the strong contrast of light and dark, the haloed streetlamps and headlights, the strong, elaborated diagonal of the pedestrian crossing. In "Birds" (2006), it is also the pedestrian crosswalk that lends a diagonal tension to the composition as a whole. This, in turn, is further accentuated by the candy-apple red of the Harley that dominates the foreground, with man and machine suggesting a glittering cyborg – or a bloated insect. In the strictest sense of the word, there is nothing threatening or even uncommon here, yet a sense of menace is almost tangible. The artist has spoken of "Chinese ladies caught like deer in the headlights". Automobiles as predators also disturb the sweet pastoralism of "Fusion" (2008). Throughout the work of Kate Waters, one can observe a careful interplay of form and content. Nor should we be misled by the impression that the compositions take life from the "throwaway" medium of the snapshot. First of all, it is the spontaneous as opposed to the posed scene that fascinates the artist. Furthermore, her subjects are usually in motion and unaware that they are being photographed. In this way, Waters wrests an authentic, typically unprepossessing yet redolent moment from the flow of time. Nonetheless, between the recording of the image and its transformation into a painting, there may well be a phase of manipulation. The process begins with the selection and cropping of a scene, but may also extend to the collaging of additional photographic "evidence" in order to strengthen the composition itself or underscore its thematic content. In the earlier study of naïve patriotism, "No Place like Home" (2002), two small boys in identical red t-shirts and American-flag shorts provide visual as well as thematic focus to the street scene. Only one of the boys existed in the original photo, while the other is an interpolation. At periodic and increasingly brief intervals, art criticism takes note of the renaissance of figurative painting. In point of fact, it never went away. Even while he was creating his all-over action paintings, Jackson Pollock regularly returned to the figurative/symbolic mode of his earliest works. Nor has a flood of digital imagery seemed to stem the hunger for the painted representation of "the real thing". The ability to mimic while simultaneously transforming reality constitutes a kind of laying on of hands. With increasing virtuosity, Kate Waters takes part in this ritual act.
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Jurriaan Molenaar | BAUHAUS + GRAUHAUS Apr 20, 2024 - May 25, 2024 |
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Michael Tolloy | ANDROS + GYNE Feb 17, 2024 - Apr 06, 2024 |
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Idowu Oluwaseun | PEDESTAL Dec 09, 2023 - Feb 10, 2024 |
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SELECTION 2023 Nov 10, 2023 - Dec 02, 2023 |
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Harding Meyer | Audience Aug 26, 2023 - Nov 04, 2023 |
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Summer Break Jul 11, 2023 - Aug 22, 2023 |
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Flávia Junqueira | Symphony of Illusions Jun 10, 2023 - Jul 08, 2023 |
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Fransix Tenda Lomba | Historical Shock Apr 22, 2023 - Jun 03, 2023 |
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Till Freiwald | Echo Jan 28, 2023 - Mar 31, 2023 |
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SELECTION | Part 2 Dec 16, 2022 - Jan 21, 2023 |
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Daniel Heil | Wheel of Dharma Nov 05, 2022 - Dec 03, 2022 |
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Claudia Rogge | WARP and WEFT Aug 27, 2022 - Oct 29, 2022 |
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Éder Oliveira | Oposición Jun 24, 2022 - Jul 30, 2022 |
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Fábio Baroli | Where the wind turns May 06, 2022 - Jun 18, 2022 |
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Frank Bauer | Bilder vom Verschwinden Mar 12, 2022 - Apr 30, 2022 |
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Selection Feb 08, 2022 - Mar 05, 2022 |
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Harding Meyer | known unknowns Oct 29, 2021 - Dec 18, 2021 |
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Kate Waters | It takes one to know one Aug 27, 2021 - Oct 23, 2021 |
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Giacomo Costa | Atmospheres May 28, 2021 - Jul 03, 2021 |
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Idowu Oluwaseun | REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE: a synthesis of time and sound Oct 30, 2020 - Dec 12, 2020 |
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Peter Uka | Inner Frame Aug 28, 2020 - Oct 24, 2020 |
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Harding Meyer | new works Jun 05, 2020 - Jul 15, 2020 |
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Mary A. Kelly | Chair Mar 14, 2020 - May 30, 2020 |
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Michael Tolloy | Solid Solidarity Jan 17, 2020 - Feb 29, 2020 |
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Kate Waters | Love Shacks and other Hideouts Oct 18, 2019 - Jan 09, 2020 |
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Frank Bauer | Paths of Inaccuracy Aug 30, 2019 - Oct 12, 2019 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark | Kindness of Strangers Jun 07, 2019 - Jul 13, 2019 |
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Sandra Ackermann | Escape into your Reality May 03, 2019 - Jun 01, 2019 |
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Kay Kaul | Cloudbusting Mar 08, 2019 - Apr 27, 2019 |
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Jurriaan Molenaar | Fermate Jan 18, 2019 - Mar 02, 2019 |
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Harding Meyer / Humanize Oct 19, 2018 - Jan 12, 2019 |
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Mihoko Ogaki / Soft Landing Aug 31, 2018 - Oct 13, 2018 |
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Peter Uka / Fragment of the Present Passed Apr 13, 2018 - May 26, 2018 |
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Daniel Heil / Monologues Mar 09, 2018 - Apr 07, 2018 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2018 Feb 16, 2018 - Feb 18, 2018 |
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Sandra Senn / Zwischen Zwei Meeren Jan 26, 2018 - Mar 03, 2018 |
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Frank Bauer / Die Gelassenheit der Dinge Nov 17, 2017 - Jan 20, 2018 |
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Kate Waters / Whistling In The Dark Sepr 01, 2017 - Nov 11, 2017 |
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Untitled Jul 12, 2017 - Aug 02, 2017 |
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Davide La Rocca / 13K ( Part 1 ) May 12, 2017 - Jun 27, 2017 |
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Sandra Ackermann / Lost in Nothingness Mar 24, 2017 - May 06, 2017 |
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Claudia Rogge / CONCENTRATION Jan 27, 2017 - Mar 18, 2017 |
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Christian Bazant - Hegemark / The Rise and Fall of Transformative Hopes and Expectations Nov 11, 2016 - Jan 21, 2017 |
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Harding Meyer / The Others Aug 26, 2016 - Nov 05, 2016 |
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Crossing Borders Jun 03, 2016 - Jul 15, 2016 |
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Sandra Senn / Flüchtiges Getriebe Apr 08, 2016 - May 21, 2016 |
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Corrado Zeni / Éloge de la fuite Nov 27, 2015 - Jan 09, 2016 |
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Claudia Rogge / PerSe Oct 16, 2015 - Nov 21, 2015 |
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Kate Waters // Tell it like it is Aug 28, 2015 - Oct 10, 2015 |
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Visions Of Sensory Space ( by Weightless Artists Association - SPARTNIC ) May 15, 2015 - Jul 04, 2015 |
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Sandra Ackermann / Wasteland Mar 13, 2015 - May 02, 2015 |
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Lost Scapes Jan 30, 2015 - Mar 07, 2015 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark / Calibrating Aesthetics Nov 14, 2014 - Jan 17, 2015 |
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Frank Bauer / Back to Basics Aug 29, 2014 - Nov 08, 2014 |
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Harding Meyer // recent paintings May 23, 2014 - Aug 23, 2014 |
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Till Freiwald - memoria Apr 11, 2014 - May 17, 2014 |
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Quadriennale Düsseldorf 2014 / Gallery Evening Apr 05, 2014 - Apr 05, 2014 |
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Giacomo Costa // Traces Nov 22, 2013 - Jan 11, 2013 |
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DC-Open Galleries: Matthias Danberg - Inventory by Appropriation Sepr 06, 2013 - Nov 16, 2013 |
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Christian Bazant-Hegemark // VOW OF SILENCE May 24, 2013 - Aug 20, 2013 |
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Corrado Zeni // Generation Why Apr 12, 2013 - May 18, 2013 |
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behind the Non-Colours Mar 22, 2013 - Apr 06, 2013 |
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Sandra Ackermann // Running to stand still Feb 15, 2013 - Mar 16, 2013 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2013 Feb 01, 2013 - Feb 09, 2013 |
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Mihoko Ogaki // Star Tales - White Floating Nov 30, 2012 - Jan 31, 2013 |
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Claudia Rogge / Lost in Paradise Oct 12, 2012 - Nov 24, 2012 |
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Harding Meyer // features Sepr 07, 2012 - Oct 06, 2012 |
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Summer 2012 - Part 2 Aug 10, 2012 - Sepr 01, 2012 |
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Summer 2012 Jul 06, 2012 - Sepr 01, 2012 |
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Maria Friberg // The Painting Series May 11, 2012 - Jun 23, 2012 |
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Mary A. Kelly // Father & Child Mar 30, 2012 - May 06, 2012 |
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Maia Naveriani // Future Wolves and Chicks so far Feb 10, 2012 - Mar 24, 2012 |
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Düsseldorf Photo Weekend 2012 Feb 04, 2012 - Feb 08, 2012 |
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Kate Waters // The Air that I breathe Dec 09, 2011 - Jan 28, 2012 |
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Frank Bauer / ...den Wald vor lauter Bäumen.... Nov 04, 2011 - Dec 03, 2011 |
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Claudia Rogge // Final Friday Sepr 09, 2011 - Oct 29, 2011 |
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Davide La Rocca - STILLS May 27, 2011 - Jul 16, 2011 |
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Giacomo Costa // Post Natural Apr 01, 2011 - May 21, 2011 |
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Harding Meyer - to be a real vision Feb 18, 2011 - Mar 26, 2011 |
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Shannon Rankin - Disperse / Displace Dec 03, 2010 - Feb 12, 2011 |
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Sandra Ackermann // I look inside you Oct 15, 2010 - Nov 27, 2010 |
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Amparo Sard / AT THE IMPASSE Sepr 03, 2010 - Oct 09, 2010 |
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Kate Waters // The Land of Kubla Khan Jun 11, 2010 - Jul 17, 2010 |
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Jurriaan Molenaar // Lessness Apr 30, 2010 - Jun 05, 2010 |
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Claudia Rogge // The Paradise of the Onlooker Mar 05, 2010 - Apr 24, 2010 |
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Ivonne Thein // incredible me Jan 22, 2010 - Feb 27, 2010 |
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Frank Bauer // Jet Set Nov 27, 2009 - Jan 15, 2010 |
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Michael Koch // forever more Oct 23, 2009 - Nov 21, 2009 |
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Masaharu Sato // SIGNS Sepr 04, 2009 - Oct 17, 2009 |
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Harding Meyer // blind date Jun 19, 2009 - Aug 22, 2009 |
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Maria Friberg // way ahead Apr 24, 2009 - Jun 13, 2009 |
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Claudia Rogge // Isolation ( aus: Segment 8 - die Blasen der Gesellschaft) Mar 06, 2009 - Apr 18, 2009 |
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Claudia Rogge - The Opening Mar 06, 2009 - Apr 18, 2009 |
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JoJo Tillmann // What you see is what you get Jan 30, 2009 - Feb 28, 2009 |
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Sandra Ackermann // Die Wirklichkeit ist nicht die Wahrheit Nov 21, 2008 - Jan 24, 2009 |
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Kate Waters - Getting used to the 21st Century Oct 10, 2008 - Nov 15, 2008 |
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Mihoko Ogaki - Milky Ways Sepr 04, 2008 - Oct 04, 2008 |
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Summer 2008 // Painting Aug 12, 2008 - Aug 30, 2008 |
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Silke Rehberg: Stationen 1,4,6,7,11,12,13,14 Jun 13, 2008 - Jul 12, 2008 |
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Maia Naveriani: At home with good ideas May 09, 2008 - Jun 07, 2008 |
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Justin Richel: Rise and Fall Apr 04, 2008 - May 03, 2008 |
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Davide La Rocca - Strange Object Feb 08, 2008 - Mar 28, 2008 |
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Frank Bauer: AkikoAlinaAlinkaAndrew.... Nov 30, 2007 - Feb 02, 2008 |
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Maria Friberg: Fallout Oct 12, 2007 - Nov 24, 2007 |
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Harding Meyer / in sight Sepr 06, 2007 - Oct 11, 2007 |
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SUMMER '07 Jul 17, 2007 - Sepr 01, 2007 |
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Kay Kaul - Wasserfarben Jun 15, 2007 - Jul 14, 2007 |
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Sandra Ackermann - Point Blank Mar 02, 2007 - Apr 28, 2007 |
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Tamara K.E.: pioneers -none of us and somewhere else Jan 19, 2007 - Feb 24, 2007 |
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Till Freiwald Nov 17, 2006 - Jan 13, 2007 |
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Claudia Rogge: U N I F O R M Sepr 01, 2006 - Nov 11, 2006 |
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Kate Waters: Killing Time May 05, 2006 - Jun 17, 2006 |
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Katia Bourdarel: The Flesh of Fairy Tales Mar 31, 2006 - Apr 29, 2006 |
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Mihoko Ogaki Feb 10, 2006 - Mar 18, 2006 |
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Silke Rehberg: RICOMINCIARE DAL CORPO Jan 27, 2006 - Feb 26, 2006 |
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Sandra Ackermann Dec 08, 2005 - Jan 15, 2006 |
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Corrado Zeni Dec 04, 2005 - Jan 11, 2006 |
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Frank Bauer Nov 18, 2005 - Jan 15, 2006 |
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Harding Meyer Oct 07, 2005 - Nov 12, 2005 |
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AUFTAKT Sepr 02, 2005 - Oct 01, 2005 |
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Claudia Rogge: Rapport Jun 17, 2005 - Jul 20, 2005 |
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May 13, 2005 - Jun 11, 2005 |
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Kate Waters: Solo-Exhibition in the Gallery Thomas Cohn, Sao Paulo Apr 16, 2005 - May 20, 2005 |
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Vittorio Gui: FROZEN MOMENTS Apr 08, 2005 - May 07, 2005 |
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Kay Kaul - ARTSCAPES Apr 03, 2005 - May 29, 2005 |
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SEO Geheimnisvoller Blick Mar 04, 2005 - Apr 02, 2005 |
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Claudia van Koolwijk at Museum Bochum Feb 26, 2005 - Apr 17, 2005 |
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Corrado Zeni - Six Degrees of Separation Nov 26, 2004 - Jan 15, 2005 |
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Maia Naveriani: What' s the difference between ME and YOU? Oct 15, 2004 - Nov 20, 2004 |
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Tamara K.E.: MAD DONNA AND DONNA CORLEONE Sepr 03, 2004 - Oct 09, 2004 |
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Davide La Rocca: Real Vision Reflex Jun 12, 2004 - Jul 17, 2004 |
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Kay Kaul COLLECTORSCAPES Apr 23, 2004 - Jun 05, 2004 |