Elsewhere

Isabelle Lafeuille - figurative painting | Jesús Curía - figurative bronze sculptures
Vernissage | Thursday, 7 September 2017 at 8 pm
Introduction to the exhibition | Ute Wöllmann, gallery owner Berlin
Exhibition duration | 8 September - 20 October 2017
Artist talk on Thursday, 28 September 2017 at 7 pm
Isabelle Lafeuille in conversation with Ute Wöllmann

left: Jesús Curiá | 2015 | Adan y Eva | Bronze | 24 x 67 cm
right: Isabelle Lafeuille | 2017 | Un oiseau rare | Acrylic and ink on canvas | 55 x 45 cm

This exhibition thematises the imagination and the power of imagination that transcends the reality that surrounds us. The two artists share the ability to tell intense stories full of poetry and magic surrounding their figures. They have mastered their craft with virtuosity and brilliance, which makes viewing their works a sensual experience of great intensity.

The sculptures of the Spanish artist Jesús Curiá are works of distinct aesthetics that touch the viewer deeply. Curiá works with bronze, which he sometimes combines with stone, wood and iron. He often combines clear human forms, faces and bodies, with abstract or geometric structures by replacing body parts with these. By omitting essential attributes, such as the seat of a seated woman or individual parts of the body, the artist concentrates on the essentials of expression in gestures and facial expressions. It is the reduction that characterises the intensity of his figures.
The human body is at the centre of Jesús Curiá's work. His figures are naked. However, the focus is not on the depiction of nudity or the human body in its physiognomic manifestations - the models are essentially sexless - but solely on the expression that results from being unclothed. His delicate protagonists are mostly childlike, juvenile in nature and their soft facial features radiate innocent openness and naivety. They seem to be defencelessly at the mercy of the world in which they proudly assert themselves.
Jesús Curiá is intensively involved with non-Western cultures, especially African and Asian cultures. Their ideal of beauty and image of man flows into his works and leads to the artist's individual expression in the fusion of various ethnic characteristics and human figures.

Jesús Curiá: Born in Madrid in 1969 | 1988-92 studied Fine Arts, specialising in sculpture, at the Complutense University of Madrid | 1992 graduated with a degree | 1995 Curso de doctorado | Since 2009 Professor Volumen Universidad Francisco de Vitoria Madrid | Lives and works in Madrid. | Represented by the Anquins Gallery, Reus, Spain.
Jesús Curía is one of Spain's most internationally recognised contemporary artists. | He is represented by numerous galleries worldwide and is present at international art fairs such as Singapore Art Stage (Singapore), Art 14 London (England), Art Karlsruhe and St-ARt with Gallery Anquin's (Germany), India Art Fair (India), Art Winwood (NY, USA) Art Chicago (Chicago, USA), Palm Beach Three (Palm Beach, USA), Scope Miami (Miami, USA), Scope Basel (Switzerland), Art Madrid (Spain), Biennial show of the South of Panama (Panama), 7rd International Art Expo (Malaysia), Art and Antique Fair's-Hertogenbosch (Holland), Art Factory (Italy)

Isabelle Lafeuille works with old historical photos. The story of a person, the memory of a person, what we think we know about a person and what we see in them and reinvent is the core content of her work. Her painterly talent, which masterfully elaborates every centimetre of her pictures and comes up with something different for every corner of the picture, takes the viewer on a journey into the picture and through time. Her pictures oscillate between realistically skilful rendering, precise painterly filigree and free, violent gestures, smears and blurs of colour. Her pictures often lull us into the romantic security of a nostalgic poetry album. We are unpleasantly touched by the kitsch inherent in them. However, Isabelle Lafeuille brilliantly bridges the gap to our own family history, including its memories and secrets, and confronts us with the emotions of all colours that arise. We penetrate her painted pictorial worlds and seek to grasp something familiar and unknown there in a way that we are unable to do with our own merely remembered images. In her paintings, memory mutates into a feeling. The ambivalence between the unfamiliar and the familiar is what makes her pictures so appealing. Isabelle Lafeuille poses the universal human question "Where do we come from?" in a new way, thereby gripping every viewer at their innermost core.

Isabelle Lafeuille: 1967 born in Paris, France | 1984-89 trained in economics in Paris | 1997-99 took part in courses at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Buenos Aires, Argentina | 2004-07
Participation in courses at the Ecole d'Art d'Anneçy, France | 2010-15 Studies at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin, class Ute Wöllmann | 2015 Appointment as master student of Ute Wöllmann | Lives and works in Berlin | Represented as an artist by galerie ROOT, Berlin since 2014.
Exhibition participations: 2016 and 2017 art KARLSRUHE, Galerie ROOT | 2013 Innsbruck, Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz | 2013 Art Fair Cologne, Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz
Solo exhibitions: 2015 final presentation with lecture on the occasion of graduation | 2013 public presentation with lecture on the occasion of admission to the master's programme at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin | 2013 Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz, Berlin, "verlassen, vers la Seine, vers la source" | 2011 public presentation with lecture on the occasion of admission to the main study programme at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin
Group exhibitions: 2015 Berlinische Galerie Berlin, charity art auction of the Telefonseelsorge Foundation | 2014 Galerie Hoffmann, Rheda-Wiedenbrück, "Berliner Landpartie" | 2014, 2015, 2016 Galerie ROOT "Hot Sunday" | 2014 Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz, "Viriditas" | 2013 Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz, "Néo-Barock" | 2013 Galerie ROOT am Savignyplatz, "Pack of Patches"

[r6_text icon="fa-map-marker"]Download invitation card[/r6_text]