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Selbstsicht - Portrait-Identitäten

Place: Sprengel Museum, Hanover

Date: -

Artists: Alexandra Bircken, Lee Friedlander, Isabella Fürnkäs, Douglas Gordon, Gerhard Hoehme, Dorothy Iannone, Kai Kaljo, Paul McCarthy, Duane Michals, Boris Mikhailov, Julian Öffler, Helga Paris, A. R. Penck, Sigmar Polke, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Dieter Roth, Niki de Saint Phalle, Timm Ulrichs, Sascha Weidner

Curated by: Olga Nevzorova

Works: Unpredictable Liars II, Untitled (Schön, Sexy, Leise)

For a long time, the self-portrait was regarded as a mirror of historical and social changes with the individual self in the foreground, until it acquired new levels of meaning from the 1960s onwards through increased critical questioning of its topicality: Artists went to physical extremes, put themselves in the place of others in an attempt to explore the Other, and gender roles were questioned through masquerades or role-playing. The self-portrait is replaced by self-staging - in the digital age supposedly more than ever in ways of a selfie - or in other words, the self is the opposite. Under the title Selbstsicht: Porträt-Identitäten (Self-view: Portrait Identities), the Sprengel Museum Hannover is now dedicating an ex- hibition to the artistic questioning of the self-portrait genre from the 1960s to the present day.

Focusing on media art, Fürnkäs explores the self-perception through a confrontation with aspects of isolation and denial in direct communication. In contrast to Fürnkäs, Öffler’s work seeks contact with other people on the Internet, which is refused after he has revealed his true “self” as an artist. All in all, the field of tension between the artistic creative process and self-observation is dealt with. Observing oneself is a subjective, an almost intimate factor. The conditions, premises and intentions are therefore always individual and variable.

-Text by Olga Nevzorova

Artist talk at the exhibition opening on October 29th, 2019 at 6:30pm. In conversation with Olga Nevzorova, curator, and Isabella Fürnkäs, artist, with a welcome by Reinhard Spieler, director of the Sprengel Museum Hannover.

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