Painting is frequently pivotal to contemporary art discourse. Other genres seldom equal its ability to express returns and ructions, challenges and constant reformulations. In Berlin, painting has a solid tradition. While other places have repeatedly declared the genre dead, painting simply carried on in the divided city and carried on again after the Wall came down.
The exhibition “Paint it all!” is a bugle call and a love letter to recent painting in Berlin. Featuring ten outstanding artists, it presents 15 selected works as teasers rather than as a stock check. Plenty more awaits discovery.
It is impossible to pin down Berlin themes or a particular Berlin style. The old dispute between abstract and figurative is over, and there is no longer any traction in creating a new Berlin myth around subculture and subjectivity. The proverbially cool city now takes its international ambience for granted. As a result, the works rarely reveal where they were made. So how does painting in Berlin set out its stall? At this exhibition as alive, versatile, serene and deeply interested in tradition and discourse. There are still, it seems, sound reasons for picking up a brush and paint in response to the world and to questions of painting. The exhibited works are from the Berlinische Galerie’s own collection and most are on show in the museum for the first time.
The artists about their works
Artists
Tamina Amadyar (Kabul/Afghanistan *1989)
Tatjana Doll (Burgsteinfurt *1970)
Philip Grözinger (Braunschweig *1972)
Eberhard Havekost (Dresden 1967 – Berlin 2019)
Olaf Holzapfel (Dresden *1967)
Zora Mann (Amersham/UK *1979)
Gerold Miller (Altshausen *1961)
Peter Stauss (Sigmaringen *1966)
Christine Streuli (Bern/Switzerland *1975)
Thomas Zipp (Heppenheim *1966)