Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to announce German artist Hansjoerg Dobliar's first solo show with the gallery, Hysterie und Abstraktion (Hysteria and Abstraction). For the exhibition, Dobliar presents a new body of paintings on canvas and aluminum. Additionally the artist has designed an immersive wallpaper scheme for the rear room that serves as backdrop for an installation of paintings.
Dobliar's paintings engage with the oil medium on a very material level. In his works, Dobliar builds up thick but fluid brushstrokes to form images. Dobliar's practice strongly recalls and builds upon the traditions of German expressionism. In Dobliar's engagement with abstraction, he enlivens the tension between figuration and abstraction. Subjects can be recognized, but only uncertainly, as if through a haze. In this way, he prioritizes the expressive handling of the material, neither blending his strokes to render his hand invisible, nor abandoning a subject in favor of pure abstraction. The expressionist brushstroke is understood for its ornamental value. This exchange is a theme also explored in his works on paper. By overpainting onto old magazine pages, Dobliar selectively obscures and represses the figures in these images. By intervening in the imagery of mass circulation, Dobliar symbolically questions cultural narratives, and the ways in which reality is undermined by myth.
Among the works in the front gallery is a series of small paintings on canvas. Referred to by Dobliar as the "dot paintings," these works appear like a series of bullseyes, or a string of echoed permutations. In exploring a similar composition over a large number of small canvases, Dobliar enacts the decorative concealment of abstraction, and expresses a fixation with the aesthetic surface. These issues of representation and presentation also inform his practice of designing the manner in which his works are displayed. Previously, Dobliar has installed wallpaper, constructed shelving, and painted on the walls to modify the atmosphere in which his works are received. Dobliar continues this practice for his show at the gallery.
Dobliar's vibrant paintings evoke the psychic worlds of the subjective experience. In his energetic and tactile engagement with the paint, Dobliar creates works that point beyond the limits of our knowledge, and force the viewer to ask where the abstraction ends and their projection begins.
Hansjoerg Dobliar was born in Ulm, Germany in 1970. Dobliar's work has been exhibited internationally, including Sammlung Rheingold at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Sammlung Falckenberg / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles; Kunstverein Oldenburg; and Beijing Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include Sies + Ho¨ke gallery, Du¨sseldorf; Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam; Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin as well as a solo presentation at INDEPENDENT art fair in New York in 2011. He lives and works in Munich and Berlin.
Since its inception only two years ago, the gallery has taken on a challenging program leading to a change of location in November 2012. Johannes Vogt Gallery is committed to bringing attention to the complex artistic and cultural ties that bind New York to both Europe and Latin America.
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment
For further details please contact Samuel Draxler at [email protected] or at 212.255.2671
