Gerhardsen Gerner

Dirk Stewen Previous Shows Glücklich

Dirk Stewen

 
 
 
 

Dirk Stewen
Glückliche Stunde 

Exhibition duration:   May 19–June, 2016
 

Gerhardsen Gerner Oslo is very pleased to announce a solo exhibition with new works on paper of Hamburg based artist Dirk Stewen. 

Drawing is an important aspect of Dirk Stewen’s practice. For him drawings are an image of the mind, a reflection of internal life. Visual ideas can be caught in mid-flight. 

The process of watercolor painting demands boundless trust in what will be. It presupposes trust in the moment, in the gesture of the brushwork and the combination of water and color. The watercolors and gouaches on display in this show are a counterpart of Dirk Stewen’s large-format black works: light, quick and as fleeting as moments, or notations.

“When I draw, elements of control and concentration will coincide with uncontrollable reactions and movements. I am very much in contact with my emotions and experiences, and when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases.
 I can experience a sense of happiness and calm. This is where the exhibition in Oslo gets its title from: ‘Glückliche Stunde’. One hour of happiness. But the term is used figuratively. The effect has no clearly defined duration. A conflict can be resolved but also a new idea or creature might be born.“ (Dirk Stewen 2016)

In this sense the resulting shapes can be strict and playful at the same time. Even figures appear such as a bird or a snake. Given the variety of shapes and expressions it is all the more surprising that the results can coexist next to each other as if they are different expressions of one thought. They are arranged in order to form a state of democratic balance, of equilibrium: a sentence made of only equally beautiful words. As much as these structures are the result of controlled composition, they also display a delicate quality that appears almost unfinished. The watercolours sum up the various elements of Stewen’s artistic vocabulary, they represent his basic principle: to keep his work in a constant state of becoming.
 

Dirk Stewen’s work has been featured in numerous international gallery exhibitions. Institutional solo exhibitions include: The Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation Artist in Residence, Marfa; Exercises, Kunstverein Overbeck Gesellschaft, Lübeck; The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers: Dirk Stewen, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Sugar, Lump Sugar, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

Group shows include, among others: The Day will come. When Photography revises, Triennale der Photographie, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg; Girls can tell, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Liebe ist kälter als das Kapital, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz; Nur hier, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Art on Paper: The 41st Exhibition, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina; Milk Drop Coronet, Camera Austria, Kunsthaus Graz; The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen);The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place, 176 Zabludowicz Collection, London; privat – Wuppertaler Sammler der Gegenwart, Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal; Pale Carnage, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol und Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; Formalismus – Moderne Kunst, heute, Kunstverein in Hamburg.


For further information please contact Marina Gerner-Mathisen, Gerhardsen Gerner, Oslo: marina@gerhardsengerner.com

or Maike Fries, Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin: T: +49-30-69 51 83 41, maike@gerhardsengerner.com
or visit our website at http://www.gerhardsengerner.com