Friedrich Kunath
Twilight
September 7 – October 13, 2007
Main Gallery
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FRIEDRICH KUNATH
Twilight
September 7 - October 13, 2007
Photo by Christopher Burke -
FRIEDRICH KUNATH
Twilight
September 7 - October 13, 2007
Photo By Jason Mandella -
FRIEDRICH KUNATH
Twilight
September 7 - October 13, 2007
Photo by Christopher Burke
Photo by Christopher Burke
Are dreams set in hallways because the perspective is screwed?
Or because they are the long, open, unused stages in our homes?
Andrea Rosen Gallery is delighted to present Twilight, an exhibition incorporating sculpture, painting, and photography by German artist Friedrich Kunath. This is Kunath's first main room exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery following his Gallery 2 show in 2005.
In the beginning of this year Kunath started to work on a group of sculptures that continue his exploration of how the impossible can be made manifest; inscribed on the edge of reality. The horizon of perception and the ability to suspend disbelief becomes tangible through recombination, adjustment of scale, omission, remodeling, painting over or mirroring.
The magic of Kunath's work is its physical and visceral magnification of sincere emotion. A double door with diamond eyes casts a literal and figurative shadow through the exhibition space.
There is a road within the home
some pine slats in the corner
and lamps along the walls that give the path an endlessness
at night.
If one is to continue the thread of David Berman's poem, a hallway is furnished with Kunath's complex versions of a barstool, a chimney, a shelf, a grand piano, a bathtub, a staircase, a coffin, and a wardrobe. Kunath's work continues to have a sublime sense of the personal and the obscure. The photographs and paintings on the wall anticipate the story of the sculptures; a jacket left hanging on an empty sheet of music paper, a smiling, deep-fried snowman sitting on a skull, a sailing boat passing a half-sunken portrait.
While each piece is a discrete work, the shadow is a joining agent. Loneliness, absurdity, and humor intertwine; the group of objects seem to be waiting - in a house about to be lived in, or one about to be moved out of. Kunath's title for the show, Twilight, also addresses this interim state when great potential, hope, and melancholy play together in a disorienting mix.
An outdoors that is somehow indoors.
Friedrich Kunath was born in Chemnitz in 1974 and in 2005 was awarded the Jürgen Ponto-Foundation Stipend, Frankfurt. Recent exhibitions include a group show at Tate Modern, London and solo shows at BQ, Cologne (2007) and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2006). This fall his work will be included in an exhibition at Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.
For more information and photographs contact Jeremy Lawson: j.lawson@rosengallery.com 212 627 6000
Friedrich Kunath: In My Room
Text by Paul Hobson, Michael Bracewell, Ory Dessau, Claire Le Restif, Paul Luckraft
In My Room is a major new publication surveying the work of artist Friedrich Kunath. It encompasses the last five years of Kunath's practice and is an extension of his unique aesthetic.
Complex and playful installations of paintings, sculptures and videos feature a cornucopia of imagery, brought together from such diverse sources as Old Master paintings, slapstick cartoons, anthropomorphized animals, and pop iconography from the 1960s and 70s.
A narrative around the emotional life of the artist is enacted through fictional characters, producing an in-between world filled with both humour and pathos. The catalogue is designed by Yvonne Quirmbach in close collaboration with the artist. New essays come from Michael Bracewell, Ory Dessau, Claire Le Restif, and Paul Luckraft.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Friedrich Kunath: Raymond Moody's Blues at Modern Art Oxford, 21 September – 17 November 2013.
Publisher: Walther König, Köln (February 28, 2014)
ISBN-10: 3863354427
ISBN-13: 978-3863354428
Friedrich Kunath: You Owe Me a Feeling
Text by David Berman; photographs by Michael Schmelling
This is Friedrich Kunath's first artist book published in the United States. In making the book, Kunath collaborated with the musician and poet David Berman and photographer Michael Schmelling.
You Owe Me a Feeling was produced alongside Kunath’s solo exhibition at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles: 2012′s Lacan’s Haircut.
Publisher: Blum & Poe (March 31, 2013)
ISBN-10: 0966350340
ISBN-13: 978-0966350340
Friedrich Kunath: Things We Did When We Were Dead
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Things We Did When We Were Dead at BQ, Berlin, April 28 - June 30, 2012.
Friedrich Kunath: The Most Beautiful World in the World
Text by Andrew Berardini and Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
Published on the occassion of the artist's first solo exhibition in the UK, at White Cube Hoxton Square, April 15 - June 3, 2011.
Publisher: White Cube (June 2, 2011)
ISBN-10: 1906072450
ISBN-13: 978-1906072452
Friedrich Kunath: I Used to Be Darker But Then I Got Lighter, and Then I Got Darker Again
Artist book, published on the occassion of the exhibition I used to be darker, but then I got lighter and then I got dark again, at Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, May 13 - June 12, 2010.
Friedrich Kunath: Home Wasn't Built in a Day
Text by Douglas Fogle, Matthew Thompson, René Zechlin
In his drawings, texts, objects, photographs, and videos, Friedrich Kunath deals with such themes as longing, melancholy, loneliness, wanderlust, and wistfulness from a subjective viewpoint that finds expression in titles like Homesick, I am a stranger here or I may not always love you. He combines personal life experiences with literary, musical, or art historical references into visual, ironic commentaries in various media. The installative total context of his exhibitions forms narrative contexts between the individual pieces that lead to the viewer to a fantastic world of associations.
This catalogue is published on the occasion of Kunath’s solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover, November 28, 2009–January 24, 2010.
Publisher: Sternberg Press (July 15, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1933128925
ISBN-13: 978-1933128924
Friedrich Kunath: In Someone's Shadow
Artist book: set of 32 color postcards in box. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Hello walls at BQ, Berlin, Sept. 4 - Oct. 31, 2009.
Extracts from "In someone's shadow" by Rod McKuen on verso of postcards.
Friedrich Kunath: Rising vs. Setting
by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Gregor Jansen, Anna Grande, and Jeff Poe
This is the artist's first monograph, published concurrently with his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. at the Aspen Art Museum.
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Aspen Art Press (February 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0934324441
ISBN-13: 978-0934324441
Friedrich Kunath
Artist book, published on the occassion of the exhibition Warum, at BQ, Cologne, January 19 - March 10, 2007.
Friedrich Kunath: Alles Macht Weiter
Artist book, published on the occasion of the exhibition Our Endless Numbered Days at BQ, Cologne, 2004.
Dirk Bell / Friedrich Kunath: Why Are My Friends Such Finks
Artist book, published on the occasion of the exhibition of the Dirk Bell / Friedrich E. Kunath exhibiton Why are my friends such finks, at BQ, Cologne October 31, 1998 - January 30, 1999.