Norbert Schwontkowski: Blind Faith

Exhibition catalogue, edited by Florian Waldvogel
texts (German/English) by Anna Ballestrem, Jens Hoffmann and Florian Waldvogel
120 p with 85 coloured illustrations
320 x 235 mm, hardcover

ISBN 978-3-86442-039-9

68,00 €

Ok, may doomsday come!

Norbert Schwontkowski’s (born in 1949 in Bremen) work raises the fundamental question: what kind of painting is still possible in the wake of trenchant technological change and the concomitant loss of both individual worlds of experience, not to mention our own physical identity? Florian Waldvogel, director of the Kunstverein Hamburg, questions this relationship in his contribution as editor of this volume, in »Hell in Slowmotion«, which once more makes the work of the popular northern German painter accessible in book form due to recent publications having been out of print for some time now. But alongside that, there are also the »Schwontkowskiesques«, as Jens Hoffmann, deputy director at the Jewish Museum, New York, is keen to stress in his essay. On the one hand this may mean a kind of painted, dry joke, which even Richard Prince recently ennobled, on the other hand, also the Kafkaesque, translucent, dark and pastose apocalyptic scenarios, the smog in the sculpture park, for instance, through which an avalanche of cars is ripping, or a highway, disappearing in the sinking sun. This tragicomic train of canvasses provides perhaps a colourful attunement for … doomsday.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein in Hamburg, 26/1–14/4/2013