Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Until April 17th at MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Jonas Burgert’s first solo show in Italy, Lotsucht / Scandagliodipendenza
april 14, 2017 - Mambo

Until April 17th at MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Jonas Burgert’s first solo show in Italy, Lotsucht / Scandagliodipendenza

Jonas Burgert’s first solo show in Italy, Lotsucht / Scandagliodipendenza, opens at #mambo - #museo d'Arte Moderna di #bologna on 26 January. Curated by Laura Carlini Fanfogna, the exhibition will fill the vast space of the Sala delle Ciminiere with 38 mostly large-format paintings created by the German artist over the last decade. A master of imaginative figurative painting, with each brush stroke Burgert creates carefully constructed scenes filled with complexity. His works depict his vision of the theatre that is human existence, examining the instinctive need for humans to give sense, direction and purpose to their lives. This exploration encompasses realms of reason, imagination and desire, generating monumental landscapes crowded with fantastic figures of different proportions: monkeys and zebras, skeletons and harlequins, Amazons and children. These dynamic pictorial dramas generate a strong sense of unease in the viewer: the subjects depicted wear masks and costumes, walls and floors split open to reveal piles of bodies or liquids, while an inexplicable darkness looms everywhere. Referenced in the exhibition’s title, the plumb line is a symbol of inner balance and a motif that appears frequently in Burgert’s paintings. Compulsively plumbing our reality is something of an obsession for the artist. He chooses to examine existential questions with his paintings and does not shy from venturing into dark corners to explore our emotions, obsessions and demons. The viewer is confronted with a chaotic world that echoes the confusion and anxiety of current events and leaves them without any grounding. His aim is to push at the limits of personal knowledge in order to strengthen our reasons for being in the here and now and restore one’s centre of gravity. According to Laura Carlini Fanfogna, curator of the exhibition, “His works show neither violence nor blood, yet their imminent presence shows through. Burgert’s paintings have the power of bringing to the surface and absorb our ancestral fears, freeing us from them. In this clear creative flair and in his vibrant interpretation, Burgert includes a specific element to be found throughout his work: the female figure. Mysterious and decisive women stand out on the canvas, instinctively conscious of their faith. The sorceresses know those secrets and truths man is frantically looking for. The sibyls come from afar, united in divination. The Michelangiolesque turbans and mannerist colors reinterpreted in a postmodern key play with the delicate chiaroscuros. They evoke the oracle virgins, the imperturbable caryatids and perhaps symbolize the archetypal almightiness of the Great Mother while dipping her into the moods of the Raben Mutter, the degenerate mother, she who disregards her offspring. Jonas’ plumb bob relentlessly plumbs the deepest depths of the abysses”. The works that are on display at #mambo consist of both monumental canvases which provide space for sprawling narratives of compositional complexity and smaller paintings which focus on the study of individual subjects, portraits that push the figures portrayed into the foreground, as if under a microscope. As written by David Anfam, author of one of the critical texts included in the extensive catalogue published by Edizioni #mambo and accompanying the exhibition “ (…) Burgert defies the logic of realistic images in a way that places him in a (far more) up-to-date context. Poetically speaking, many of Burgert’s titles eschew commonplace meaning and are elusive/allusive rather than explanatory. When I asked the artist as to why, even with my modest command of the German language, I found these words hard to grasp, his disarming answer was that they are mostly untranslatable and even baffling in the original. Similarly, rather than assume Worringer’s loaded concept of “empathy/Einfühlung”, Burgert instead speaks of Empfindung, thereby opposing a cooler, more objective attitude lacking in overt emotionalism, kitsch and the like. Visually, too, there are the disorientating changes in scale between one part of a painting and another; the oft-remarked fact that his figures, hominoids and other protagonists almost never seem to make eye contact (or any other kind of emotive contact for that matter) with each other; and especially the idiosyncratic use of color. It is hard to think of another contemporary who manipulates color with a legerdemain comparable to Burgert”. The exhibition is part of the Polis section of fifth edition of ART CITY #bologna, an institutional program of exhibitions, events and cultural initiatives developed jointly by the Municipality of #bologna and BolognaFiere. During Arte Fiera, it offers new opportunities to discover and learn about artistic heritage through a dialogue with #contemporaryart. We would like to thank Blain|Southern for their kind cooperation and precious support. 
 
SHORT BIO #jonasburgert was born in 1969 in Berlin, where he lives and works. His principal solo exhibitions include: #jonasburgert, STÜCK HIRN BLIND at Blain|Southern in London (2014); Schutt und Futter at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover (2013), Gift gegen Zeit / Poison Against Time, at Blain|Southern in Berlin (2012); #jonasburgert Lebendversuch, at the Kunsthalle in Krems and at the Kunsthalle in Tübingen (2011 and 2010); Zweiter Tag Nichts at the MCA in Denver, Promenade Space (2008) 
 
#jonasburgert Lotsucht / Scandagliodipendenza 
curated by Laura Carlini Fanfogna 
Istituzione #bologna Musei | #mambo#museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna 
26 January – 17 April 2017 
 
General information: www.mambo-bologna.org OPENING HOURS Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday and Festivities h 10.00 am – 6.00 pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday h 10.00 am – 6.00 pm, closed on Mondays  TICKETS Exhibition full ticket € 6. Exhibition reduced ticket € 4 (Card Musei Metropolitani #bologna and others) Exhibition + #mambo and #museo Morandi Permanent Collections full ticket € 10 Exhibition + #mambo and #museo Morandi Permanent Collections reduced ticket € 8