PaintLounge BERLIN
Vernissage: 16 November 19:00-22:00
Opening hours: 17 & 18 November 11:00-19:00
KühlhausBerlin, Luckenwalder Strasse 3,10963 BERLIN
PaintLounge Berlin is a painting salon exhibition and weekend of conversations about contemporary painting. You are invited to come along, hang out and join in with the exhibiting painters' discussions.
PaintLounge is part of Sluice Exchange Berlin at Kühlhaus Berlin and is part of the British Council's UK/Germany season, celebrating the "cultural connections between the UK and Germany" and will include a diverse range of painters working in Germany and the UK including Julius Bobke, Katrin Bremmermann, Simon Burton, Lisa Denyer, Geraint Evans, Pius Fox, Alison Goodyear, Alastair Gordon, John Greenwood, Vincent Hawkins, Linda Hemmersbach, Gabriele Herzog, Paula MacArthur, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Charley Peters, Ruth Philo, Alex Roberts, Wendy Saunders, Geraldine Swayne, Miriam Vlamming, Casper White, Michaela Zimmer, Sebastian Rödel, Sophia Schama.
PaintLounge is artist-curator run initiative organised by Paula MacArthur & Wendy Saunders, generously supported by Arts Council England’s Artists’ International Development Fund.
PaintLounge - PAINTERS IN CONVERSATION
Program
Painters from Germany and the UK will be coming together for a series of seven informal conversations on contemporary painting in the PaintLounge as part of Sluice Exchange Berlin; visitors are invited to come along and join in with the conversations.
Friday 16 November 2018
18.30 Paintlounge Painters’ Introductions over opening drinks. PaintLounge will be on the 3rd floor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday 17 November 2018
12 -13:30 Sluice talks area on the ground floor
Teaching Painting
Traditional and recent innovations in art education in Germany & the UK
Geraint Evans, Geraldine Swayne, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Alex Roberts, Nicola Stäglich, Julius Bobke
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday 17 November 2018
14:30 - 16:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor
The painting process, dialogue between the painting and painter
Painting… looking… seeing… thinking… painting…
Simon Burton, Vincent Hawkins, Alison Goodyear, Linda Hemmersbach,
Katrin Bremermann, Erika Krause, Julius Bobke, Pius Fox
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday 17 November 2018
17:00 - 18:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor
Can abstract painting be political?
Contemporary abstract painting in relation to the current political climate.
Abstract painting in relation to political issues
Led by Michaela Zimmer with Stelios Karamanolis, Lisa Denyer, Vincent Hawkins, Andrea Medjesi-Jones
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday 18 November
12:30 - 14:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor
Painting and screens
How has the digital environment influenced our understanding of painting and how have digital tools
affected the ways in which we experience painting?
Led by Charley Peters with Wendy Saunders, Alison Goodyear, Gabriele Herzog, Sophia Schama
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday 18 November 2018
15:00-16:30 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor
Success medium
‘Painting’s exceptional position in the 21st century’ Based on ideas discussed in Isabelle Graw's recent
book, 'The Love of Painting', painters will explore how painting has progressed throughout history and into
the 21st century, absorbing and influencing other media.
Alison Goodyear, John Greenwood, Paula MacArthur, Alastair Gordon, Miriam Vlaming, Stelios Karamanolis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday 18 November
17:00-18:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor
‘Color as a manual thing’
Colour theory through painting practice
Ruth Philo, Paula MacArthur, Casper White, Lisa Denyer, Nicola Stäglich, Pius Fox, Gabriele Herzog
MORE DETAILS & NOTES FOR THE TALKS
Paintlounge Painters Introduction over opening drinks in the PaintLounge exhibition space.
Friday 16 November at 18:30 in the Kühlhaus on the 3rd floor
We hope everyone will come and meet up at the opening of Sluice Exchange and PaintLounge at 6.30. We
will introduce everyone giving us all the opportunity to to say hello and have a few minutes to introduce ourselves and our work to one another.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teaching Painting
Traditional and recent innovations in art education in Germany & the UK
Saturday 17 November at 12-13:30 in the SLUICE TALKS area
Geraint Evans, Geraldine Swayne, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Alex Roberts, Nicola Stäglich, Julius Bobke
Examining the similarities & differences between both traditional and recent innovations in art education in Germany & the UK, contrasting and comparing practices, supports, systems at art school and beyond in Germany and the UK.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Further notes, texts, links
The painting process
Dialogue between the painting and painter
Painting, looking, seeing, thinking, painting
Saturday 17 November 14:30-15:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor of the Kühlhaus
Alison Goodyear, Simon Burton, Vincent Hawkins, Linda Hemmersbach, Katrin Bremermann, Erika Krause, Julius Bobke, Pius Fox
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lisa-milroy-2220/lisa-milroy-on-painting video & transcription
http://www.lisamilroy.net/c/4/texts/p/441/act-one-seen-too-2011-12-lisa-milroy-interviewed-by-kate-self
“When I’m in the middle of working on a painting, I’m not really aware that I look at it. I’m on the move constantly between palette and canvas, mixing paint, changing paint brushes, wiping paint off the canvas, re-painting the image. It’s as if the painting and me are one - and it’s impossible to see your own body entirely, being in it! However as soon as I stop to take a look at what I’ve done, by laying my paint brush down I separate myself from my painting and see it as an independent object. My eyes alone then lead the way.” In looking critically at my painting, I try to assess whether the match I’m after is apparent, between my thoughts and feelings and the painted image. Though physically detached from my painting, this kind of looking keeps me conceptually and emotionally connected to it - like the motor of a car running in neutral. But the moment I pick up my paint brush and start to paint, I kick into gear and my awareness of looking disappears - once again, my painting and I are one. Looking merges with making, and my eye and hand assume equal partnership. When I finish a painting, I look at it with yet a different eye. In this mode of looking I feel at my most detached and separate from my painting. Through its contemplation, I enter an imaginative space in which I discover aspects of myself and my relation to the world and other people. But it’s almost as if the painting has been made by someone else. Stretcher and canvas, the primed surface and layers of paint on top, the
slippery sheen of linseed oil - all the messiness of making and my efforts to transform material have receded from my consciousness.” Lisa Milroy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can abstract painting be political?
Contemporary abstract painting in relation to the current political climate.
Saturday 17 November 2018 17:00-18:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor of the Kühlhaus
Led by Michaela Zimmer with Stelios Karamanolis, Lisa Denyer, Vincent Hawkins, Andrea Medjesi-Jones
From “Politics & abstract painting” by Sharon Butler
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2014/10/politics-and-abstract-painting-matthew.html
“In the beginning, when Malevich and El Lissitzky were making some of the first Western abstract paintings, abstraction was infused with politics and ideas. The connection continued through European art movements in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Arte Povera, ZERO Group, and Supports/Surfaces. In recent years, however, abstract form and process have become vehicles for more personal, less strident explorations of the provisional, the contingent and the casual. These days, a painting often starts with a small idea about everyday life–a nasty break-up, for instance–that might incidentally be read as a metaphor for a larger, more universal issue or argument even though the connection may be completely unintended. Nonetheless, I’ve always taken the position that individual artists’ widespread adoption of these approaches is, in itself, an indication of our deep and pervasive social problems, regardless of the artists’ intents.’ Sharon Butler - Two Coats of Paint Constructivism encouraged a new focus on the tangible and material aspects of art, and its experimentalspirit was encouraged by a belief that art had to match the revolutionary transformations then taking place in Russian politics and society.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Painting and screens
How has the digital environment influenced our understanding of painting and how have digital tools
affected the ways in which we experience painting?
Sunday 18 November 12:30 - 14:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor of the Kühlhaus
Led by Charley Peters with Wendy Saunders, Alison Goodyear, Gabriele Herzog, Sophia Schama
Merge Visible - Essay by Charley Peters, read the full essay here: http://
www.contemporarybritishpainting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MV-catalogue-essay.pdf
• A short extract from Charley’s essay “The digital environment has influenced the way in which we understand pictorial conventions; the layered logic of Photoshop has affected our comprehension of colour, depth and volume, its painting tools our recognition of a distinct quality of line, and the multitude of windows visible on our computer screens at one time has normalised fragmented spatial composition – all of which relate to the formal considerations that lead to an artist’s application of paint to surface. In our cut-and-paste culture the combination of numerous painterly elements is both symbolic of an evergenerating visual environment and simultaneously transcends it, reinforcing the physical textures and haptic qualities of the painted surface as a contrast to the dematerialised space of the screen.”
• From Amy Sillman On Colour “My palette is also infected by Apple, by my work with animation on iPads and iPhones, and the polychromatic effortlessness of weightless color options one can change in an instant across a screen by the mere drag of a finger, a phone designed for a generation of people who, like the art historian at the beginning of this essay, may never have never felt the weight color in their hands. This means that color usage is in part arbitrary; it is as much about welcoming the wrong colors as the right ones.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Success medium - Painting’s exceptional position in the twenty-first century
How painting has progressed throughout history and into the 21st century, absorbing and influencing other media.
Sunday 18 November 15:00-16:30 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor of the Kühlhaus
Led by Paula MacArthur with John Greenwood, Alastair Gordon, Miriam Vlaming, Stelios Karamanolis
Selected quotes from the Introduction of The Love of Painting, a Genealogy of a Success Medium by Isabelle Graw, published by Sternberg Press “In recent years, painting has received much more attention in critical writing and theory, and contemporary painting exhibitions have been extremely popular, bolstering an increased interest in the art form. A growing number of exhibitions have proclaimed its resurgence.”
“The pressure on painters to legitimise their choice of medium has eased since the turn of the millenium. In τhe 60s, 70s and 80s, painters still felt compelled to extensively justify their recourse to the medium, but in the decades since, painting has come to be seen as a largely unproblematic practice in many art academies where students choose to paint without a feeling of guilt or unease…”
“Painting is also still very popular at auction houses, although it has always traditionally been at the apex of the hierarchy of forms. Nonetheless, it is notable that painted pictures… always set record prices at auction.”
“the high status of painting is above all explained by its intellectual prestige more than any other art form, it has a long history of theoretical exaltation. Its flat pictorial arrangement and the limitation of its surface have contributed to this process of intellectualisation: as a symbolically loaded mode of distancing, whose spatial limits force it to represent its contents in compressed form, the painted canvas demands intellectual abstraction on the part of the spectator, too.”
‘An obvious and significant connection links uniqueness and preciousness: as painting’s uniqueness underlies its status as a precious object. I would suggest that these factors - the singularity, preciousness and longevity of the painted picture - continue to have a latent resonance in painting’s contemporary status as... a ‘supreme discipline”
“For the past twenty years I have also pointed out that painting and Conceptual art are not, as was once assumed, polar opposites; rather, they are directly related to each other... But looking back, it is also clear that such an expanded and more conceptual understanding of painting has helped restore the mediums cachet.”
“Painting’ has continuously absorbed new phenomena. However, although painting’s absorptive capacity has made it an extremely heterogeneous medium, it has also “obstinately maintained itself”... or painting, a key symptom has been the particularly tenacious existence of the “painted canvas” format. Right up to the present day, painters have returned to or referred to this format or some variation of it. Painting it seems dies hard.”
———————————————————————————————————————————
‘Color as a manual thing’
Colour theory through practice
Ruth Philo, Paula MacArthur, Casper White, Lisa Denyer, Nicola Stäglich, Pius Fox, Gabriele Herzog
Sunday 18 November 2018 17:00-18:00 in the PaintLounge on the 3rd floor of the Kühlhaus
Using Amy Sillman’s essay ‘On Colour’ as a starting point.
https://www.amysillman.com/uploads_amy/pdfs/194b4c83.pdf
• “Color as object is earthly material stuff.”
• “Color is also a luxury item sold like controlled substances by the ounce or gram… And who can resist the mythic narratives of origin of pigments?”
• “But note: if you figure oil paint by the time vector, in longevity rather than dollars per ounce, paint is way better than drugs.”
• “Walter Benjamin writes that color is the very essence of childhood imagination, a powerful form of innocence that can subvert the logic of capitalism.”
• “Color production has involved some of the most spectacularly horrible things on Earth, such as mining, colonialism, slave labor…"
• “The unassailable final fact of color is that you can’t really know what another eye is seeing, ever.”
• “My palette is also infected by Apple, by my work with animation on iPads and iPhones, and the polychromatic effortlessness of weightless color options one can change in an instant across a screen by the mere drag of a finger….. This means that color usage is in part arbitrary; it is as much about welcoming the wrong colors as the right ones.”
• “Recently an art historian and I surprised each other: I told him that even if I were blindfolded I would know whether I was holding a tube of cadmium red or a tube of cobalt violet because of their difference in weight. He didn’t know this. He had never held pigment in his hands, and didn’t know that cadmium red is heavy and cobalt violet is light. This surprised me because the weights of these pigments are fundamental to a painter, and not knowing their differences seemed absurd to me, like not knowing the difference between a coat and a T-shirt. But my job and that of the art historian are different—mine is to
hold color and his to behold it, and this split is as old as the hills. Even Josef Albers assumes this in Interaction of Colors stating in the intro that his book will reverse the “normal academic order” by putting practice before theory. So I guess I’ll begin there too, taking up the subject of color as a manual thing.”
Amy Sillman )
