8 Oct 2010 to 20 Feb 2011
Hours : Monday-Sunday 10.00-18.00.
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
South Shore Road,
Gateshead
NE8 3BA
Newcastle
United Kingdom
Europe
p: +44 (0) 191 478 1810
m:
f: +44 (0) 191 440 4944
w: www.balticmill.com
ANSELM KIEFER 8 October - 16 January 2011 ARTIST ROOMS On Tour with the Art Fund
Anselm Kiefer is one of the foremost figures of post-war painting. This exhibition, the largest of the artist’s in the UK for many years, will span forty years of his work. Major paintings will be presented over two floors of BALTIC's galleries, alongside the monumental installation Palmsonntag. The works on display are drawn from the Tate Collection and ARTIST ROOMS; a national collection of contemporary international art jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland.
The starting point for Kiefer's work is an enduring fascination with myth, history, theology, philosophy and literature. For many years his painting was a means to come to terms with his native Germany’s past. More recently the subject of the artist's work has become ever concerned with religious traditions and the symbolism of different cultures. Kiefer's weighty subject matters are reflected in the monumental size of many of his works – their scale is such that many fill the viewer's field of vision.
Kiefer's keen exploration of unorthodox materials – lead, ash, rope and human hair – bring an emotional potency and move his painting into the realm of sculpture. Among the works to be included in the exhibition are three paintings from the artist's early Parsifal series (1973), drawn from Richard Wagner’s last opera of the same name. In Palette 1981, Kiefer revealed the problematic legacy inherited by artists in post-war Germany: the artist's palette hangs from a single burning thread evoking shame, loss and the apparent impossibility of artistic creation.
The Kiefer exhibition is taken from ARTIST ROOMS, a national collection owned jointly by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland and established through The d'Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is being shared with galleries and museums throughout the UK thanks to the support of independent charity, the Art Fund and, within Scotland, The Scottish Government.
DIRK BELL 8 October - 16 January 2011 MADE IN GERMANY
German artist Dirk Bell presents an exhibition of new work, and that not yet seen in the UK, including sculpture, animation, large-scale installation and the ephemeral, romantic drawings for which he is best known. The exhibition explores the enduring tussle between love and freedom, along with the universal structures that shape and control societies. Bell's own car will also appear, sporadically, as it makes a physical and metaphorical journey from Germany to Glasgow and now to Gateshead and beyond
DAN HOLDSWORTH 12 November - 20 February 2011 Blackout
Blackout brings together a remarkable new sequence of images taken in Iceland by British photographer Dan Holdsworth. Occupying a space between documentary and the make-believe, Holdsworth’s photographs combine traditional analogue methods with digital processing to transform the elemental terrain of a giant glacier as it melts away. The result is an other-worldly vision of the future. Reproduced at a grand scale, the blue of sky becomes the deep black of space, while the earth appears in negative, beyond imaginable human time and space.
