PAULE HAMMER – INTERVIEW MAGAZIN 2
2012-12-10The focus of this show is on a series of interview pictures that the artist created by inviting old and new friends and acquaintances to his atelier to sit for a portrait and discussion session.
The artist’s own dreams as well as larger world-encyclopedia-like issues on the problems facing humanity had previously provided the starting material for Hammer’s motif-and-text-filled pictures, which combined personal experiences with stories from friends and media information. But now, in the intimate atmosphere of a portrait session held in his own atelier, the artist opens himself more than ever before to his subjects’ personal dreams, experiences, desires or theories about the world and humanity in general – yet always within the context of a straightforward social situation that forms the basis for this close exchange.
Landscape painting, the still life and the portrait are just some of the traditional art history genres that intentionally underlie the artist’s works. But Hammer takes these genres, surpasses their limits, and creates an expanded reference field. So they are not limited to representing familiar local situations or individual human characteristics, but transgress the limits of their own forms: ”Surpassing forms does not mean … breaking away from forms, alienating oneself from their location. To validate the formless does not call for non-forms; instead, it is about agreeing to work with forms.”[2] Two factors are behind the specific dynamics in Hammer’s works: the elimination of the rules governing traditional representation and the use of different contexts.
Exhibition runs through to January 12th, 2013
Jette Rudolph Gallery
Strausberger Platz 4
D- 10243 Berlin
Germany
