Nuit 2.0 – artists of the gallery

Nuit 2.0 – Group exhibition with works by the gallery’s artists.

A summer night in the year 2022 in Berlin. After two epically long years of pandemics and a war of aggression in Europe, we long for a summer of new freedoms and nights of revelry.

But can we break out of the rehearsed crisis mode, of loneliness and emptiness, and surrender again to life, to sensuality that has become uncanny? Is the night mysterious, full of security, an element of life and thus enjoyable and desirable? Does it become the space of love? Or is it a dance on the volcano and the night does not seem liberating but constricting and scary, making us think of the next morning and the busyness and worries of the next day?

The artists Anna Tunikova, Axel Teichmann, Birgit Naomi Glatzel, Bo Larsen, Corinna Rosteck, Dale Grant, Daniel and Geo Fuchs, Daniela Finke, Deni Horvatić, Ivar Kaasik, Marco Kaufmann, Martin A. Völker, Mathias Vef, Reinhold Petermann, Philip Crawford and Sabine Beyerle seek, find and give inspiration:

ANNA TUNIKOVA

SOMEWHERE IN PROVENCE, 2022, oil on canvas, 160 x 120 cm

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1994, the graphic artist and painter Anna Tunikova went to school in Schleswig-Holstein and has a degree in communication design. The artist comes from a family creative background. She first experimented in airbrush with gaudy colours and painted figurative pictures, but soon realised that these pictures did not express what she herself felt at the time: contrary to the flood of impressions we are exposed to every day anyway, she longed for calm and simplicity. Anna Tunikova lives and works in Berlin.

Artist’s statement on Nuit 2.0:

No matter how long the night seems, the sun always rises again. We just have to learn not to be afraid of our own shadow.

***

Life creeps by on familiar paths,
And with the years I change,
What once seemed tragic and charged with lightning,
Now seems trivial or ridiculous to me.

A birdie flies, startled, flapping its wings,
A thunderclap shatters the peace,
And I cannot sleep now for beauty,
Where once gloom robbed me of sleep.

Ivan Elagin

AXEL TEICHMANN

MEIN BEWUSSTSEIN SCHLÄFT NEBENAN, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm u.  SCHRÄGLAGE, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

The artist was born in Stuttgart in 1974 and trained as a graphic designer at the Johannes Gutenberg School in Stuttgart. In 2004, he graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and moved into his first studio in Stuttgart. In 2008 he devoted himself to art in public spaces with a façade for the Haus am Stadtsee in Bad Waldsee. He completed a study visit and master class with Walter Libuda in 2011 and moved into a second studio in Berlin in 2015. Axel Teichmann has already been presented in the USA, Switzerland and Germany with numerous exhibitions and at art fairs. He lives and works in Stuttgart.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

The situation, with the war in Ukraine and the never-ending Corona pandemic, is unsettling, frightening and threatening. The search for stability and identity is particularly evident in both paintings.

In the painting “My Consciousness Sleeps Next Door”, there is a separation of an I on the tray and the larger I. The human being is always divided. Thus the human being is always divided, e.g. in the search for freedom and belonging. The current situation, with the war in Europe, intensifies the inner conflict because belonging has to be clarified and freedom has to be defended. The picture “Schräglage” shows an unstable astronaut who wants to mark a planet with a little flag. Here, territory is to be marked and thus power is to be demonstrated. The striving for power and control seems to be inherent in man. The Corona pandemic means loss of power, as does war. The annexation of space already seems questionable in the painting.

BIRGIT GLATZEL

I HAVE NO CHOICE! – I WANNA DANCE, 2022, sound in cooperation with Saskia Stephan, visuals in cooperation with Benjamin Seide, Mini Disco Box made from cardboard, 40 x 40 x 40 cm and SOUTH SIDE BEATS TEL AVIV #1-10, 2004, analogue b/w photography, print on baryta paper, various motifs, all 24 x 30 cm

Born in Kempten/Allgäu in 1970, the freelance conceptual artist and architect Birgit Naomi Glatzel was already intensively involved with painting and photography during her architecture studies. Since 1998 she has been working mainly in the field of photography. She began her photo project “a friend is a friend of a friend” in the summer of 1998, which attracted international attention. Her works have been shown, among others, at the Tirana Biennial (“ideal city” 2003), the Venice Biennial (Neuland “urban-shift.net” 2004), in Berlin, Jerusalem, Paris and Kiev. Her video work “Going to Jerusalem” and a photo of the project “You and Me” were presented in the “Kunstautomaten” at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

Benjamin Seide (* 1968, visuals) is a media artist, researches and teaches at the School of Art, Design and Media, Singapore, where he also lives. Exhibitions include the Beyond Future Design Festival (ZKM Karlruhe), the V&A Digital Futures (London) and the Palais des Nations (Geneva).

Saskia Stephan (*1976, sound, sounddesign, noisediscover) lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

When the theme of Nuit 2.0 came up, I was immediately struck by images of my Tel Aviv club days, which were incredibly profound and immediate. I dived into the break beat sets of my DJs from 2004; a mini disco ball keychain inspired the idea of the installation “I have no choice! – I wanna dance”. This is a combination of 10 photos from the series “South side beats Tel Aviv” and a mini disco, which, reduced to a minimum architecturally and musically, one to one, lets you dive into the world of the night for a short moment, filled with dance, emotion and the “here and now”.

BO LARSEN

WHITE NIGHTS – STOCKHOLM, 2022, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

The German-Danish artist Bo Larsen (* 1986) bases his painting on experimental painting techniques, which he constantly improves and refines through self-study. He thematises his respective feelings, emotions and sensations in his works. The paintings, which can be classified as abstract expressionism, open up new dimensions of interpretation of abstract forms to the viewer through the multifaceted colour and form design. He has exhibited his works at home and abroad and his works are now in German and international private collections. Bo Larsen lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

Many people associate the night with darkness, melancholy and tranquillity. The white nights in Scandinavia are celebrated there with liveliness, joie de vivre and enlightenment. The sun and moon shake hands and show an interplay of light and darkness, which unfolds in a breathtaking experience of nature.

The people of Scandinavia experience a mixture of day and night, which is reflected in blue, white, evening red and dawn grey. This phenomenon can be presented particularly intensively in abstract colour design on canvas.

CORINNA ROSTECK

SAORI_UNDERWATER, 2019, Backlit translucent in Lightbox, 100 x 130 x 11 cm u. JANUS MASSE, 2022, Noa Wertheim, 2022, Staatstheater Kassel, Tecco IIridium Silvergloss on Alu-Dibond, 50 x 90 cm

Corinna Rosteck (* 1968 in Hameln and grew up on Ibiza) is a freelance artist in the fields of photography, video and installation. After scholarships in London, Paris, New York and Japan, she lives and works in Berlin. She is a member of the German Society for Photography, Cologne, and the German Artists’ Association. She has successfully realised art-in-architecture projects with renowned companies. Her works are presented in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

At night, longings and fears unfold, this time offers enormous free space and time stretches into seeming eternity until the next morning. At night, spatial dimensions shift, thoughts lose and meander, everything is possible or more graspable.

In my moving pictures I try to make this tangible through dance. In movement, man flees from time, tries to grasp it, to overcome it, to let it flow, but also to change it. My search is for images that make these “disturbing realities” tangible. Slipping away, submerging and sinking correspond to the expression of “torn time” – Riven in Time. Intermediate zones, twilight, day and night, Janus’ head, surreal and somnambulistic apparitions, dreams characterise my pictorial motifs.

In collaboration with solo dancers and dance ensembles known to me, I create my own performances and installations dedicated solely to the creation of my works. The images are projected onto the dancers and staged in the interplay of light, space and music to create a total work of art.

DALE GRANT

PURPLE SERENADE, 2022, and CHINA ASTER, 2018, both C-type print on Alu-Dibond, 120 x 120 cm

After graduating from university with a degree in International Relations, Dale Grant followed his heart and became a photographer specialising in fashion and portrait photography. Having worked for many years as a commercial photographer, Dale turned his focus to fine art photography. Flowers are now his models of choice and they are for him an allegory for life. “We often do not see the beauty that comes with growing older. Through my photography of flowers I aspire to reveal the beauty that can be observed in all stages of life”. Born in 1961 in The Bahamas, Dale lives between Berlin and Rotterdam.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

I look at the flowers that I capture as metaphors for the circle of life and seek to unfold the beauty to be found in the journey.

Our lives have been filled with much fear, doubt and uncertainty caused by the cataclysmic events of the past two years. In presenting my two pieces I visually illustrate the continuity of life going from the dark of night to the light of day.

In “Purple Serenade” the flower is photographed during the dawn of its short life. The soft and withered pedals try to hold onto its once vibrant hues while it folds upon itself creeping back into the dark with the last ray of light casting a shadow on it. In “China Aster” the sturdy and impenetrable petals are awashed in the light of a new day as the flower metamorphizes into an alien form gliding through space towards a better time to come.

DANIEL and GEO FUCHS

TOYGIANTS – „pink tableau“, 2004, „gold tableau“, 2004 and „Jeeg“, 2006, all C-Print / laminated behind 4 mm acrylic and 4 mm Alu-Dibond, 100 x 78 cm, with frame 114 x 92 cm

Daniel (* 1966) and Geo (* 1969) Fuchs have been working together on conceptual photography series as well as video works and installations for more than 20 years and have thus achieved international renown. What their works have in common is that they initially pretend to the viewer to have grasped the motif with a single glance. However, the question quickly arises as to what was actually already there at the moment the picture was taken and what was not. No matter where the photographs were taken, one becomes aware that reality and fiction have become mixed. Their works have been shown in many international solo and group exhibitions and art fairs and can be found in private and public collections. Daniel and Geo Fuchs live and work in the Westerwald region.

The artists on Nuit 2.0:

The last two years have shaped and changed all of us – for many, the rhythm of life has changed a lot – people have been more at home – have been more self-reliant – and have wished for the end of the pandemic situation. Despite all the changes and despite the current pandemic and political situation, spring and summer are now filling up again with more energy and colour – new spaces and old freedoms can be opened up again and the old life can be reconnected with. The pictures of our “TOYGIANTS” series are bursting with positive energy and power – gold and pink – sun and colour – that is what should fill us now, without thinking about what the dark season will bring us again. We live in the now!

DANIELA FINKE

PHILHARMONIE BERLIN, 2020/2022, Pigment Print behind Acryl Matt, 92,5  x 130 cm, and NOCTURNE 1-3, 2022, Fine Art Pigment Print on Aluminium Gold,  all 60 x 37 cm

In her works, Daniela Finke (* 1958) explores the invisible relationships of the visible world. In bright colours, she marks bodies, architectures, everyday things or natural phenomena, assembling them in her own worlds of inversion that turn the inside of perception inside out. The collection of objects in pictures, the tracing of their scenic connection accompanies her work as an overarching context of action, from which picture like experimental settings arise. Like magical illuminations of the unconscious, abstract and concrete at the same time, her series play through the temporary patterns of perception and reveal their fragile, rationally hardly graspable shape. Daniela Finke has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including the European Prize for Architectural Photography. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are represented in numerous public and private collections. Daniela Finke lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

Summer night, open air cinema at the Berlin Kulturforum. Remembrance of a place where the city opens up again, of a moment to meet again. Waiting for the film in the twilight; the illuminations, the structures of light and lines in the windows of the Philharmonie as night slowly falls and darkness illuminates the screen.

The sound waves of the music create a slight vibration inside. It is not the same reality as before, not the same body. Everything is slightly displaced. A night of fleeting images and signs.

DENI HORVATIC

OUTDOOR, 2020, C-Print on Alu-Dibond, 102 x 102 cm

Deni Horvatić was born in 1991 in Čakovec, Croatia. His artistic practice includes photography as well as video art and CGI. He worked for several years at Studio Silvio Vujičić and at the fashion brand E.A.1/1 S.V. as a researcher and head of communication and visual design.

In September 2020, the exhibition SCAN was shown at the Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery in Zagreb, Croatia. In May/June 2022, he participated in the 36th Youth Salon, the largest and most prestigious exhibition event for visual artists under 35 in Croatia. His exhibition SCAN was shown at Galerie nüüd.berlin in June and July 2022.

Deni Horvatić lives in Čakovec, where he works as a visual artist.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

The sun is below the horizon. You are the sun. We are all aware of your existence at all times.

I am goodbye, good night, farewell. I am transient. But in this moment, at the intersection of night and time, I’m me. Simply there. Now!

IVAR KAASIK

LA PORTE DE LA NUIT, 2021, oil on canvas, 190 x 150 cm

Ivar Kaasik (*1965) is an Estonian artist. He first studied architecture at the Estonian Academy of Art and then at the University of Art and Design Halle/Saale. The artist paints photorealistic pictures, often choosing pop icons as motifs. Through blurring, blurred contours and pale, pastel hues, the people depicted are alienated, the images appear alienating, cool and distant. His works have been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions and hang in private and public collections.

Ivar Kaasik lives and works in Berlin and Kuressaare, Estonia.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

With almost black and white hues, the painting PORTE DE LA NUIT offers subtle deception through colour perspective, thin lines whose geometric shapes continuously plump and recede to create an illusionary space. Seamlessly painted in oil, the canvas has an artificial vibrancy, its ethereal glow reminiscent of plasma screen technology, creating an electric aura that is both spiritual and synthetic.

Resonating with electrified glow, flawless tension, dizzying restlessness, pulsating energy, minimal compositions in their disregard for space – consisting of an almost monochrome coloured surface set against a white floor where the shapes appear in an undulating 3-D perspective.

One can think of all sorts of things when standing in front of the large-scale abstraction. Everything – but nothing concrete…

MARCO KAUFMANN

NORDLICHT 1 / NORTHERN LIGHT 1, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

Born in 1975 in Vorpommern and living in Berlin, the artist Marco Kaufmann graduated in free art (painting and photography) at the Berlin-Weißensee Academy of Art after a vocational training as a graphic designer. Inspired by the city, the country, his travels and photographs, he transforms what he feels and thinks into a subjective version of reality using various techniques – he paints, casts, sprays, glues. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in private and public collections.

Marco Kaufmann lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

Shapes float in an apparent sky, a movement can be sensed although the shapes are firmly anchored on the canvas. Our eyes wander to where the light is and do not stay in the dark for long.

It is usually the daylight and the shapes and colours of the day that inspire me. I travel a lot to capture these. Time and again, however, I create works that are floating, breathed in and fleeting in a way that we do not experience during the day – a dance between the momentarily experienced and the already disappeared, originating from an inner universe. They appear almost unexpectedly and disappear just as unexpectedly. The process of painting then resembles a play of light. Here, my sprayed paint mists seem like parts of nature’s most spectacular light show, the Aurora Borealis or “Northern Lights”.

As this exhibition is dedicated to the night, I choose a work inspired by this impressive natural phenomenon and its flickering colours in the night sky – luminous, moving and spherical.

MARTIN A. VÖLKER

DIE NACHT ALS MORITAT IN VIER BILDERN / THE NIGHT AS A MORITAT IN FOUR PICTURES, 2022, all double shot, taped, digital pigment print on Alu-Dibond, 50 x 50 cm

Martin A. Völker was born in Berlin in 1972 and works there as a writer and art photographer. His artistic method emerges from his many years of lecturing as a cultural scientist and aesthetician at Berlin’s Humboldt University. For him, street photography is the medium that captures the diversity of urban life. The artist overcomes the documentary nature of street photography and develops it further in the direction of a magical realism. Between January and March 2022, the nüüd.berlin gallery showed his solo exhibition #SpiritOfStBerlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

German Romanticism shaped a yearning image of the night, imagining the night as the dream time of ideal humanity. My picture cycle shows the opposite: wars drag people into an eternal night of real agony and loss. The stark contrast of the two night concepts reveals the turning point in time in which we live.

Each of the four pictorial pieces has its own title. Taken together, the titles create a poetic description of the night. This narrative connection is reinforced by viewing the elements in a clockwise direction. The end in turn becomes the beginning, and the viewer is sucked into a visual maelstrom with no way out.

The night unlocks the gate to hell.
The night erases all faces.
The night devours the bridegroom.
The night eats into the day.

MATHIAS VEF

NACHTARBEIT / NIGHTWORK, 2022, Digitale Collage, Fine Art Print on Pearl Papier, 200 x 110 cm

Mathias Vef (*1976) studied at the Royal College of Art in London. He works with moulded bodies of bodybuilders and ballet dancers, digitally collaged sex workers and portraits of transpersons dissolved with GHB or has an artificial intelligence create a mutated family tree of his family. All this merges into psychedelic, almost unnatural works that he has exhibited in Berlin, London, New York and most recently in Brussels during an artist residency. Mathias Vef lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

Almost all the people I work with and photograph for my collages are night people. They are people who are different and extraordinary, who also express this with and through their bodies. The night is a protective space for otherness that gives more possibilities for development than the glaring light of the day, the public, the apparent reality. The night opens up other worlds, heterotopias, which I and my models seek and explore.

With Novalis, man is a stranger in the light and is reborn in the night. Even though I do not describe an escape from the world with my images, the transcendental, transformation, fusion, intoxication and dance are elements that are important to me because they are less visible in the light. This new image for Nuit 2.0, in its mysterious darkness and its ‘nocturnal exposure’ reimagined for me, expresses all of this differently than in previous works and also re-lights my sense of how I think of myself in the world.

PHILIP CRAWFORD

BLUE MOON, 2022, diptych print, 41 x 30,5 cm

Philip Crawford (* 1988) is a US-American artist based in Berlin and Philadelphia. His interdisciplinary studio practice combines print media, sculpture, video, and installation to explore the ways we read images and decipher the narratives they transmit. Philip holds a B.A. in History from Stanford University and is an MFA candidate at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

This small edition of prints, titled Blue Moon, reflect on longing and on serenity. Or, perhaps, on longing for serenity. Described by Rebecca Solnit as the colour of the world “at its edges and in its depths,” blue is the colour of distance and desire. Blue exists in the space between where we are and where we want to be. Blue is our ache for nearness, refracted through the atmospheric distance between here and there.

From here, I admire the mystical fullness of the moon, hovering just out of reach. From here, I listen to the soulful voice of Billie Holiday, wavering over piano keys and rejoicing in the beauty of newfound love even as she laments a sudden loss of self. I close my eyes and conjure images of there, of my daughter, born in the final hours of 2020 with a small, blue birthmark on her ankle.

Holiday sings on,

Blue moon
Now I’m no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

from Blue Moon by Billie Holiday,
written by Lorenz Hart

REINHOLD PETERMANN

FRAU AUF STUHL /WOMAN ON CHAIR, 2009, watercolour, pencil & charcoal, 58 x 42 cm; FRAU AUF STUHL III /WOMAN ON CHAIR III, 1994, bronce, 38 cm u. TANGO I, 2010, bronce, 47 cm

Reinhold Petermann (1925 – 2016) created his first wooden objects while a prisoner of war in Scotland. After returning from the war, he decided to become a sculptor. As a master student of Emy Roeder, Petermann came into contact with the Brücke artists at the Landeskunstschule Mainz. In the course of his life, Reinhold Petermann has created more than 300 works, abstract stainless steel and square structures and, time and again, figurative works. The female body was a particular inspiration for him. Numerous watercolours and drawings complete the oeuvre of this versatile artist. He has exhibited at home and abroad.

The artist about the night:

Soirée

Speakers talk, violinists play,                  But then it’s finally over.
People sit there and are silent,                 with music and art enjoyment.
Singers sing, wind players blow,            Everyone claps like possessed,
After the break, a new start                     You go home in a cheerful mood,
Sometimes someone has to cough.         All adversity is forgotten.
Then comes a fortissimo.                          Some look up in delight,
There’s a break, you go to the toilet.      you feel culturally remedied…

After the break, a new start                    You go home in a cheerful mood,
with piano and lots of singing.               go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.
Singer can’t help it,
makes violent faces;
Sings of love and of life,
Sometimes a little off-key.

SABINE BEYERLE

TAK-TAKU GUESTHOUSE, 2017, oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm u. VASHON, 2018, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Sabine Beyerle (* 1975 in Leonberg) studied fine arts with Prof. Hans-Jürgen Diehl at the Berlin University of the Arts. She graduated as a master student there in 2003. She always works from her own photographic models, which she weaves into a dense, sometimes multi-perspective pictorial complex in her paintings. Realistic depictions combine with painterly elements from the background of the picture. Pourings of colour, structures that take on a life of their own, ornaments and dissolution are always at the beginning of her work. The paintings are mostly devoid of people, but show traces of human activity and thus offer the viewer a kind of empty stage for their own stories and experiences. The artist has presented her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad and has received various awards and residency grants. Sabine Beyerle lives and works in Berlin.

The artist on Nuit 2.0:

“Tak-Taku” is the name of an Iranian inn in the middle of the desert, not far from the city of Isfahan, which I passed in 2016 on my one-year trip around the world. After the communal meal, when everyone had disappeared into their rooms, the light from the rooms shone through the colourful windows into the quiet courtyard.  Tak-Taku goes back to the sound of the traditional Iranian double door-knocker, which, depending on the knocking sound, gives a clue as to whether a woman or a man is asking to enter.

“Vashon” features an old cinema on Vashon Island, a small hippie-esque island just outside Seattle in the US. I was taking part in an artists’ camp and on one of my rambles I passed the cinema: the contrast of the glowing string of lights in the dark night, the strong red, a certain atmosphere and mood.

3D-tour of the exhibition:

Courtesy of ART@Berlin