DRAWING ROOM MADRID
FEB 23 — 27, 2022
PALACIO DE LAS ALHAJAS
Plaza de San Martín 1, 28013 Madrid (Spain)
ALEKOS HOFSTETTER, KLAUS KILLISCH
OPENING
Wednesday, FEB 23 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
(by invitation only)
FEB 24 from 26, from 12:00 to 9:00 pm
FEB 27, from 12:00 to 6:00 pm
LAGE EGAL’s participation is made possible by Kreativ-Transfer, with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
We are pleased to announce our participation in the art fair DRAWING ROOM MADRID for it’s seventh edition, which takes place from 23 to 27 February 2022 at the beautiful Palacio de las Alhajas in the city center. The fair presents the latest trends in contemporary drawing and highlights drawing as a field of action and experimentation. This year’s edition is dedicated to showcasing young artists and masters, highlighting their value and enabling a connection between them.
LAGE EGAL presents two wall installations with works by Alekos Hofstetter and Klaus Killisch that combine powerful drawings, with references to pop culture and music, post-war and brutalist architecture.
For KLAUS KILLISCH, the focus is on the power and impact of images, which he creates through lively compositions and colour inventions. The influence of his idol Marcel Duchamp can be seen in many of his works. Killisch draws inspiration from all art forms, be it fine art, pop music, literature, fashion, comics or film. In creative collage techniques, materials, genres and realities merge in his paintings. Records or record covers often form the central sculptural element of his large-format, colourful works. In addition, the artist often works with photographs that he enlarges, mirrors or distorts in his collages, whose motifs he recomposes and recontextualises.
KLAUS KILLISCH, born 1959 near Leipzig, lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at the Berlin-Weissensee Academy of Art and has had extended working stays and study trips in France, Italy, Ireland, the USA and Japan. His art has been exhibited in national and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, Sezon Museum of Art in Tokyo, Folkwang Museum in Essen, Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Landesmuseum Berlinische Galerie, Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, and Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig.
In his cycle of works TANNHÄUSER TOR, started in 2012, the artist and painter ALEKOS HOFSTETTER deals with the constant change in architecture between 1950 and 1980. The works reflect on modernist and post-war architecture and its relationship to space, time and distance. In his compositions he shows the juxtaposition of iconic, emblematic architecture. By adding comic and written elements using various old printing techniques, he transforms these works into a drawing-like collage. In this way, the artist constructs a new relationship between architecture and graphic elements, making visible the experience of the loss of time and transforming it into a moment of melancholy.
ALEKOS HOFSTETTER was born in Bonn in 1967 and grew up in Bonn, Brussels and Bangkok. He lives and works in Berlin since 1996. Together with the artists Christian Steuer and Daniel H. Wild, he founded the artist collective BEWEGUNG NURR in 1989 in Dresden. Hofstetter participated in numerous international exhibitions including Goethe-Institut Toronto; the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin, Ideal-Passage, Berlin, GLUE, Berlin, Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz, Laura Mars Gallery, Berlin and received various grants from Stiftung Kulturfonds, Berlin, Stiftung F.AIM, Den Haag, Else Heiliger Fonds, Berlin, Stiftung Dr. Robert und Lina Thyll-Dürr, Elba, Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop, the Stanglerhof Residency, Bolzano.
ABOUT DRAWING ROOM MADRID
The seventh edition of Drawing Room Madrid takes place at the beautiful Palacio de las Alhajas, from 23 to 27 February, and transforms its proposal under the artistic direction of Alejandro Martínez, to offer a new and ambitious experience of enjoyment and acquisition of drawing in all its declinations.
While preserving the defence of the fertile ground of contemporary drawing, the fair adheres to the powerful statement of the continuity of art through time and proposes to show special recognition to the Masters of Modernity. Each era has invoked a different idea of the modern that concerns the past and, inevitably, our vision of the future from the present. The role of the Master is thus granted by a shared recognition in which the current art system – museum curators, art historians, art market agents – and the public consent. The Masters demonstrate a special capacity to be loved, vindicated and celebrated by society.
Drawing is a terrain for action and experimentation. Released from apriorisms and dogmas, from the very first sketch, the connection between the young artists and the masters is evident, demonstrating that the resources of this language are infinite. Stroke and gesture, sign and figure, merge and mutually recognise each other. For this reason, the Drawing Room fair in its renewed 2022 edition aims to be an active part of this and other narratives that allow us to trace identities and genealogies in contemporary art.
In this edition, we invite galleries to present those they consider their masters together with today’s artists, highlighting their value and facilitating the link between them. In addition, we open the participation to those galleries whose discourse enhances the value of drawing since the Avant-Garde and throughout the 20th century. On the other hand, Drawing Room Madrid continues to incorporate new galleries to its project, and welcomes the youngest galleries created in recent years, whose spaces will highlight the most recent creation.
