Dieter Nuhr Surrounded by Faraway

From May 3rd to May 29th, 2023, the Corner Space of #maxxi, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, will host Dieter Nuhr’s new exhibition “Surrounded by Faraway” curated by Dirk Geuer.

Supported by the Brost Foundation, one of Germany’s most significant art and cultural foundations, over 20 photography-based artworks by #dieternuhr with a pronounced pictorial character, painterly modified with digital tools of modern technology, will be on display and celebrate the scenic and cultural diversity of our world.

Dieter Nuhr's art is characterised by a desire to experience and explore the world as a unified habitat and shows the world in a state of transition. Nuhr's digital and photography-based paintings are inventories of a reality that fade away in people's minds and become memories. Nuhr, who subjects his photographs to a digital-painterly process, adds layers of colours over his photographed objects with the help of a programmed, digital brush to show the disappearance of what is real in memory. Only the essence remains of that was originally seen and photographed. This can no longer be described as reality, but as a subjectivised image or memory of it.

Organised by the Association for Art in Public, the exhibition in Rome is in aid of the YOU Foundation - Education for Children in need in an official collaboration with UNESCO. The artist believes that a sustainable world can only be achieved if everyone supports the weakest. Therefore, he has decided to also draw attention to issues such as poverty and hunger by showing portraits of children and #people in need from developing countries such as Senegal, Myanmar, and India. Nuhr, who here abandons the medium of photography altogether, approaches classical portraiture in a forceful, digital way, positioning his figures in a geometrically organised space of vertical and horizontal lines. This creates a field of tension in which the figures, which appear completely detached from their cultural environment, are aesthetically equal. Only facial features and clothing provide information about the origin of the figures depicted, which are random encounters, but also family members of the artist, #people from the German Ruhr area or images of saints Nuhr has come across on his travels. 

The exhibition will be inaugurated in the presence of the artist, the former German Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Brost Foundation, Armin Laschet, UNESCO Special ambassador Dr. h.c. Ute-Henriette Ohoven and the President of the Brost Foundation Prof. Bodo Hombach.

Dieter Nuhr: ”Being invited here to Rome after my exhibitions in Hagen, Venice, and Dakar, is a great honour for me. In the past, culture emanated from Rome towards the world and now I have been called to take the world and my home, the Ruhr area, to Rome.”
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dieter Nuhr, born in 1960 in Wesel, Germany, lives and works in Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Ibiza. He is active as an artist on various platforms. For many years he has been one of the most successful satirists in Germany, but his work as a visual artist significantly predates this. From 1981 to 1987 he studied art (painting) at the University of Essen, the former Folkwang school. Since 2020, he has been painterly reworking photographs taken on his travels with the help of digitally programmed brushes. Nuhr has already visited more than 93 countries – 12 of them will be showcased in his works presented at the Corner Space at #maxxi.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE TRAVELLING EXHIBITION

The presentation of Dieter Nuhr's works at the space Corner, #maxxi national museum for the arts of XXI century, in Rome is the fourth stop of the travelling exhibition sponsored by the Brost Foundation, which promotes projects in the field of art and culture with a focus on supporting the Ruhr region in Germany, where #dieternuhr grew up and which he also often addresses in his artworks. 

The kick-off of the internationally conceived exhibition series took place at the Osthaus Museum—the world’s first #contemporaryart museum—in Hagen, Germany, in May 2022.  The second stop - parallel to the 59th Venice International Art Biennale - was the famous Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, located in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. In November and December 2022, the Musée Thédore Monod d'Art Africain in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, celebrated Dieter Nuhr's works as the first museum in Africa. In October 2023, they will be on display at the prestigious Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, Germany. With the support of the Brost Foundation, further international stops are planned for 2024 and 2025.