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INDIAN BLEND

Marc Schmitz, Airtag (from the series Spaces N° 6), 2010, airtex and aluminium, 4 x 4 x 1.70 m, edition 1/3 orange (2/3 silver, 3/3 white)
INDIAN BLEND
curated by Anke M. Ulrich

KAREN MIRZA & BRAD BUTLER, LIZA NGUYEN, REBECCA RAUE, MARC SCHMITZ, NORBERT SCHWONTKOWSKI

Opening: Saturday, 9th of January 2010, 6:00 pm

12.01. - 20.02.2010
Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
The exhibition "Indian Blend" presents five positions by contemporary European artists for whom India's cultural, mystical and spiritual legacy has provided an important source of inspiration. The title "Indian Blend" evokes the harmonious combination of different ingredients that make up India's particular flavour. The artists selected by Anke M. Ulrich draw in different ways on sociopolitical themes, spiritual promises or personal experiences that they associate with India. In the video installations, paintings, photographs and drawings exhibited, these influences are given subtle, conceptual, poetical or very direct expression while touching on questions of reality and the imagination, utopia and truth, spiritual openness and critical distance. Indian values have become increasingly influential in contemporary art. The exhibition at Galerie Alexandra Saheb addresses this phenomenon and opens a forum in which significant positions are introduced for the first time. In a period in which contemporary Indian art has a strong presence on the Western exhibition circuit, this exhibition shows, conversely, the influence of Indian values and ideas on Western artists.

While the film and video projections of Karen Mirza/Brad Butler (London) subject the realities of everyday life in the public spaces of India and Pakistan to a critical examination, the work "Shangri La" by Liza Nguyen (Paris/Cologne) made up of painterly, digitally reworked inkjet prints based on photographs, nonchalantly declares the artist's solidarity with the exile Tibetans in northern India. Rebecca Raue (Berlin), on the other hand, in her paintings collaged with text and photographs, refers in a poetical fashion to the superior truths of individual and universal life philosophies that draw on traditional Indian wisdom. In his spherical video projection "Change your life", Marc Schmitz (Berlin) refers to similar Indian and Asian teachings, pursuing them almost ad absurdum. Finally, the portraits of Norbert Schwontkowski (Berlin) deal with fundamental human questions or refer to depictions of Buddhist deities.

Galerie Alexandra Saheb
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