Hans-Jörg Mayer
Ice-Ice-Baby
Private View 11/02/11 6-9pm
Exhibition dates: 12/02/11 – 02/04/11
Union Gallery is delighted to present the first solo-show in the UK by Berlin based artist Hans-Jörg Mayer.
„Hans-Jörg Mayer and I had a psychedelic band together a while ago. We called ourselves „Die Schlüssel“ … How did the name came up? ... Well, there were The Doors, so we thought “The Keys” would be a real good choice.“ Gaby Dziubaâ¨
â¨Hans-Jörg Mayer’s painting „IN ANOTHER LAND“ dated 2006 seems to be exactly what it says it is, in more than just one way. It has a straight forward poetic, almost literary quality which seems to come from another land – that other land namely where figurative painting is still possible.
It could easily be much older than is currently dated, and compared to some other paintings in the show, could be made by someone else.⨠â¨Hans-Jörg Mayer grew up with TV shows like The Avengers and the first art book that he came across in the 60s was Lucy Lippard’s “POP ART”.
In the times of young neo expressionism of the 80s, Mayer consequently followed a more conceptual, emblematic direction represented by his first language paintings.⨠â¨Even if some of his new paintings shown at the Union Gallery on one level seem to clearly be inspired by Lars von Triers, movie Antichrist, this seems to be more about the ANTI, as Mayer’s personal working interest, than about the particular splatter aesthetics of the movie.
Again he also turns to language paintings. GAGA , as compared to the older laguage works, gained a layer of trash, spraypaint, random graffiti.⨠â¨It therefore might sound like an unforseen but worthwhile conclusion that Mayer’s work is not about any of this. Or rather: it only regards the surface of all of this. The surface of figurative painting, the surface of pop, the surface of abstraction, the surface of text, trash, graffiti... the surface one could say recent art history. Hans-Jörg Mayer is a post-avantgarde artist. He deals with art‘s history central means of production: the canvas.⨠â¨
Hans-Jörg Mayer was born in Singen, Germany.â¨He lives in Berlin.
For more information please contact: +44 (0)20 7739 9119 or: info@union-gallery.com
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