BED AND CLOCK, MOON AND BEACH:
EDVARD MUNCH
Georg Baselitz, André Butzer, Peter Doig, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Adrian Ghenie, Mark Grotjahn, Sophie von Hellermann, Asger Jorn, Sanya Kantarovsky, Adam Saks, Grace Weaver
Group show curated by Christian Malycha
Berlin: Goethestraße 2/3, 12 June – 1 August 2020
Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to announce the group show BED AND CLOCK, MOON AND BEACH: Edvard Munch, curated by Christian Malycha. The show includes works by Georg Baselitz, André Butzer, Peter Doig, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Adrian Ghenie, Mark Grotjahn, Sophie von Hellermann, Asger Jorn, Sanya Kantarovsky, Adam Saks and Grace Weaver.
In the face of the world’s constant deterioration throughout the 20th century, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is the painter of life’s fundamental tale of birth, love, fear, and death. Beyond that he is, together with Henri Matisse, one of the greatest colourists of the past 100 years.
This cross-generational group exhibition BED AND CLOCK, MOON AND BEACH picks up the invisible thread, which connects Munch’s oeuvre with our present.
Time and again, Munch is able to spark “vital controversies” and, according to Georg Baselitz, highlight “the risk” every new generation has to take, in order “to put itself onto its own feet”. Munch’s liberty and his freshness are unbroken.
The existential inner conflicts of his figures correspond with a tremendous vitality, positivity, and painterly openness, by which, for instance, Günther Förg was heart-stricken. It is an openness that can express and make visible the vanishing traces of life.
Due to this expressive quality, Munch is to this very day just as unsettling as he is fascinating. For he affirms that painting, whether figurative or abstract, can still be a sensuous sign of human existence.