DRAWING ROOM LISBON 27 — 31 OCTOBER 2021
SOCIEDADE NACIONAL DE BELAS ARTES
Rua Barata Salgueiro, 36, 1250-044 Lisbon (Portugal)
MARTA DJOURINA
KLAUS KILLISCH
ASTRID KÖPPE
Open hours: WED — SAT, noon — 9pm
and SUN, 11am — 7pm
FOCO BERLIM is curated by Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge:
This year’s edition of DRAWING ROOM LISBON focuses on Berlin’s drawing scene. Three galleries from the German metropolis are representative of a large number of different protagonists who make up Berlin’s vital and diverse art scene. This cannot be considered an exhaustive representation, but in a certain way this selection nevertheless reflects the attempt to depict something of the special spirit of the city.
What the galleries have in common is that they are international and originally non-German companies that have all been drawn to Berlin. From Scandinavia, France and Eastern Europe. In a way, they form a triangle that, when placed on the map of Europe, shows in its centre the city where the world was politically divided along the demarcation line. That was 30 years ago, but the historical heritage and the city’s permanent dynamic of invention, shaped by newcomers from all over the world, create an artistic climate of a special kind.
KRISTIN HJELLEGJERDE GALLERY was founded in London by a Norwegian and has also had a branch in Berlin for several years. Their programme is very internationally oriented, with a certain focus on non-European art.
LAGE EGAL is a Berlin project space run by the French artist and curator Pierre Granoux. Over the years, young new talents have been presented here time and again, but also established artists have been brought into dialogue with each other, up to and including collection presentations.
ANAID GALLERY, opened in Berlin by the Romanian art historian Diana Dochia, points with its programme to south-eastern Europe and has set itself the goal of promoting young female artists from her homeland.
All these Berlin galleries see themselves as bridge-builders to the countries of their origin and beyond into the world. Drawing as a medium of mobility, of finding ideas, of experimentation is ideally located in a city of upheavals and all these international new Berliners help to further develop drawing in their city and globally.
MARTA DJOURINA explores in her artistic work the nature of light through photographic experiments. She investigates the cause and effect of light phenomena on photosensitive paper, incorporating characteristics of several genres: By means of various light sources, a performative movement combined with self-made film negative is traced, whereby a painterly gesture is captured in the process of analogue photography. With the term Filtergram Djourina describes her work process.
Her works have been shown in Germany, Scotland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Bulgaria… 2018 Djourina was awarded with a scholarship by the Dorothea Konwiarz Foundation, the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft and in 2020 the Eberhard-Rothers scholarship.
ASTRID KÖPPE’s cosmos is abstract, but inspired by the real world of animals, plants, crystals or microorganisms. She draws from the pool of what is directly observed and materially experienced. However, she does not reproduce, but extracts the aspects of what she sees that are interesting to her already in the process of perception and forms an essence before her inner eye. With this essence in her mind, she sets about drawing the imaginative forms, which can then gain an additional life of their own in the course of the work. Immediately sensually perceptible and suggestive, Astrid Köppe’s drawings and enamel works speak a poetic, reduced formal language, mysterious, irritating and of tremendous precision and refinement.
KLAUS KILLISCH studied painting at the Art Academy in East-Berlin in the late 80s. His early work echoed the neo-expression style that was prevalent in an oppressed East Germany. Then just afer the wall went down, Killisch embraced his interest in pop culture. He samples many materials and strategies including collage and photography. These shifts in an artist’s career are common; what’s unique to Killisch’s vision is how the earlier themes and styles explicitly appear and re-appear in his later works.
Killisch has been represented in many exhibitions including the Biennale in Venice, New National Gallery in Berlin, Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, and included in several public and private collections in Germany, France, USA…
