April 2018

Out of the collection

Georg Baselitz, Andy Warhol, A.R. Penck, Jonathan Meese, Sebastian Schrader, Ugur Güler, Ulrich Riedel, Yaşam Şaşmazer & Stephan Balkenhol

left: Georg Baselitz - Adlerdarstelung, 1979, water colour on paper, 85 x 60 cm

right: Georg Baselitz - Mann mit Tanne, 1985, woodcut, 65 x 49.2 cm

Georg Baselitz is a German artist known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings rendered with distinctive brushwork

and often exhibited upside down. His practice, which includes sculpture and printmaking, explores what it means

to be a German artist in the postwar era, and is characterized by bold colors, forceful brushstrokes, and the incor-

poration of folkloric or archetypal subject matter. “I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over,” he

said of his process. “Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived and the picture that fights for its

own life.” Born Hans-Georg Kern on January 23, 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, Baselitz renamed himself after

his hometown in 1961. He counts Willem de Kooning as a lasting source of inspiration ever since seeing his work as

a student, also citing the influence of Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock. His provocative subject matter and out-

spokenness on culture and politics, at times has made him a polarizing figure in the art world. In 2016, a compre-

hensive travelling show “George Baselitz: The Heroes”—dedicated to the artist’s 1965–1966 series of Hero paint-

ings—opened at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main. He currently lives and works in Munich, Germany. Today,

Baseltiz’s works are included in the collections of the Guggenheim Bilbao, the National Gallery of Art in Washington,

D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Berlinsche Galerie, among others.

Georg Baselitz

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 investi-

gation. With her realistic sculptures, she questions in turn the notions of identity, doppelganger, the self & the oth-

er, 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, ru-

ins, remembrance and transience of memories. Sasmaser’s works have been exhibited worldwide in various institu-

tions, galleries, biennials and art fairs such as Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA, USA), Positions (Berlin), Contem-

porary 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).

Yasam Sasmazer

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, draw-

ings, 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.

Jonathan Meese

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 paint-

ings 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 Pol-

ke oder Jörg Immendorff, a representant of German painting and one of the major artists of the XXth Century.

A.R. Penck

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 world-

wide in various institutions, galleries, biennials and art fairs such as Biennale RicCAA 13 (Padua, IT), Kunstvere-

in Würzburg (Würzburg, DE), Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Trier e. V. (Trier, DE), Positions (Berlin, DE), Contem-

porary Istanbul (Istanbul, TR), P/ART (Hamburg, DE), Art Karlsruhe or C.A.R Contemporary Art, (Karlsruhe, DE).

Ulrich Riedel

Ulrich Riedel - Politikos Despos, 2017, varnished wood, 266 x 60 cm

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 paint-

ing 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 com-

bined with trivial existential and melancholic themes, make him one of the most important upcoming voices in Germany.

Sebastian Schrader

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”.

Uğur Güler

Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol - Mann mit grauen Haaren, 2003painted 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 chis-

els. “Figurative sculpture is often misused as a bearer of messages,” Balkenhol reflected. “In my vision my sculptures be-

come 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 concen-

trate 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.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol - Hand with flowers, 1957lithograph on paper, 35 x 25.5 cm

Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Raus-

chenberg, Warhol responded to mass-media culture of the 1960s. His silkscreens of cultural and consumer icons—in-

cluding Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and Brillo Boxes—would make him one of the most

famous artists of his generation. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in

it do,” he once explained. Born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, he graduated from the Car-

negie Institute of Technology in 1949. Moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration, the young

BERLINARTPROJECTSPotsdamer Str. 6110785 Berlin+49 (0) 30 240876060www.berlinartprojects.comhello@berlinartprojects.com

artist worked for magazine such as Vogue and Glamour. Though Warhol was a gay man, he kept much of his private

life a secret, occasionally referencing his sexuality through art. This is perhaps most evident in his drawings of male

nudes from the 1950s, and later in his film Sleep (1963), which portrays the poet John Giorno nude. In 1964, War-

hol rented a studio loft on East 47th street in Midtown Manhattan which was later known as The Factory. The art-

ist used The Factory as a hub for movie stars, models, and artists, who became fodder for his prints and films. The

space also functioned as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. During the 1980s, Warhol collaborated

with several younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. The artist died

tragically following complications from routine gall bladder surgery at the age of 58, on February 22, 1987 in New York,

NY. After his death, the artist’s estate became The Andy Warhol Foundation and in 1994, a museum dedicated to the

artist and his oeuvre opened in his native Pittsburgh. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Insti-

tute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.