Cecily Brown
Couple
2003 - 2004
oil on canvas
228,4 x 203,2 x 3,7 cm
Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin
picture Jochen Littkemann
© Cecily Brown

Nathalie Djurberg
untitled
2010
clay animation, video
music by Hans Berg
06:30 min.
Courtesy Nathalie Djurberg, Gió Marconi, Milan and Zach Feuer Gallery, New York
© Nathalie Djurberg

cecily brown | based on a true story
september 3 to november 7, 2010

Cecily Brown (*1969 in London) is considered to be a shooting star of expressive painting. The artist, who lives in New York, translates her motifs – often landscapes or erotic images of human bodies entwined in each other – into large-format, energetic color-compositions. Concrete outlines of bodies or objects are only vaguely indicated and dissolve into colored, highly expressive surfaces. Brown's atmospherically dense pictures continue the tradition of such painters as Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet, William Hogarth or Willem de Kooning. In the spaces of the kestnergesellschaft, her presentation will include a new cycle of works. In 2009, Cecily Brown had a solo exhibition at the Hamburger Deichtorhallen and is represented in the collections of important museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.

nathalie djurberg | snakes knows it's yoga
with music by hans berg
september 3 to november 7, 2010

The animated films of Nathalie Djurberg (* 1978 in Lysekil, Sweden) open for the viewer a vista onto both beautiful and disturbing scenes. The artist realizes her narratives with seemingly innocuous means of design: The self-formed figures of cloth and Plasticine create the impression of a puppet- or marionette-theater, recall the clay figures of children's television. They only seem strange at a first glance. Their distorted and deformed bodies ultimately present a theatrical performance which may be associated with themes such as obsession, power, desire and violence. The filmic works are accompanied not only by the melodic compositions of Hans Berg, but increasingly by installational and sculptural works as well. For her contribution 2009 to the 53rd Venice Biennale, Djurberg was awarded the Silver Lion as best young artist. She is known in Hannover as a participant in the exhibition Made in Germany.

michael sailstorfer
november 26, 2010 to february 6, 2011

The works of Michael Sailstorfer (* 1979 in Felden, Fils) are already familiar to the visitors of the kestnergesellschaft from the group exhibition Made in Germany in 2007. The shooting star of the German sculptural scene made his appearance there with two space-encompassing works: a Ferrari tire and a sound-walk in the Lichtgraben. His interest is focused primarily on the dynamic interplay between stillness and movement, on the naked physical circumstances of the objects which he enriches with his own ideas and manners of utilization. His works go far beyond visual perception and address additional senses, even sometimes approaching the border of pain. For his solo exhibition in the kestnergesellschaft Sailstorfer, who studied in Munich with Olaf Metzel, will develop a series of new works.

joachim koester
november 26, 2010 to february 6, 2011

The Danish artist Joachim Koester (* 1962 in Copenhagen) works in the media of photography and film. With his camera, he appropriates historically or mythically charged sites and investigates them in terms of their present status quo. Thus in The Kant Walks, he examines the former Königsberg and current Kaliningrad for the traces which the philosopher Immanuel Kant left in the cultural memory of that city. In his recent works, Koester has become increasingly interested in the human body's modes of expression and gesture which can be followed back to ritual activities, such as in Tarantism. Koester participated during 1997 in the Documenta X, and during 2005 in the Venice Biennale.




julian goethe | david lachapelle
february 25 to may 8,2011

andré butzer
may 27 to august 7, 2011

daniel richter
september 3 to november 6, 2011

alex katz
november 25, 2011 to february 5, 2012