RAUMX London 12.05 – 27.05.2023 Preview Thursday 11.05.2023

Simon Callery

I am a painter. In order to understand what painting can do today I have made works that exist on the margins of what can be understood as painting. I have written the word ‘INVERT’ on my studio wall to remind me every day that I must subvert the established conventions of image-based painting if I want to find new roles and develop new forms of painting. It is my intention that an encounter with one of my paintings is as much for the body as it is for the eye.

I have worked in the landscape alongside field archaeologists on many projects. What I have learnt there I have applied to works made in the urban environment and developed in studio based work. The visceral qualities of the excavation sites have made me sensitive to the physical qualities of landscape and the relationship of material to time.

The paintings share spatial qualities we associate with sculpture and I embrace it. We live in image dominant cultures and it is possible to say that the stress on the visual in everyday life inevitable suppresses the other senses. I am working to give painting a material body and as a consequence, a better awareness of our own.

• born London
• Graduated from Cardiff College of Art 1983
• Has shown extensively in the UK and internationally since 1990s.
• Public collections include: Arts Council Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. Birmingham Museums Trust. British Museum. European Investement Bank, Luxembourg. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate
• Forthcoming shows 2023: Inauguration Lo Brutto Stadl, Paris. Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting now. Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Simon Callery & Vlatka Horvat, Annex14, Zuerich. Space as Duty of Care, Studio G7,Bologna. Ouverture, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. Simon Callery & Georg Schmidt, RAUMX-London. Simon Callery.Contact paintings, CAB, Burgos. The Surface of Place and the Depth of Place . Rudolfinum, Prague.

Georg Schmidt

The exchange with researchers from the field of quantum physics has had an influence on my painterly reflections for some time. At the beginning of this discussion was the question of what the Higgs field is all about. The description of an energetic field struck me, not directly perceptible to us, but with significant effects on our world. It seemed to me as if I had encountered here the paraphrase of an underpainting, as it has been used in painting for centuries. Color as underpainting can be like a Higgs field in the picture as a force field effective. While painting, I am preoccupied with this principle of layering, spatially dynamic processes of colourful relationships that are not commensurable or measurably defined in a state. Further concepts, such as chaos and order, determination and coincidence as well as interactions, spatial movements, dimension and proportions I reflected with the pictorial means of painting. Like a tapestry of sound, this encounter with the theme of quantum physics accompanied me in the studio.

• Born               Lübeck, Germany
• 1985-1989    Philosophie, Universität Hamburg
• ab 1986         Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg
• ab 1994         Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
• 1995               graduated as master student with Gotthard Graubner,
                          lives and works in Cologne and at the
                          Raketenstation, Stiftung Insel Hombroich
• Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
• 2022               „Und dein Grün“,Kunstraum K634, Köln
• 2019               Geschichte, Kopfermann Fuhrmann Stiftung, Düsseldorf
• 2018               Lesende, Galerie Reul, Bonn
• 2017               Tide, Kunstverein in der Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (K)
• 2016               Horizont, Galerie Weigmann, Düsseldorf
• 2015              Flutmarke, Galerie Reul, Bonn
• 2021/22         Mentor in the Art Mentorship NRW
• seit 2017       Annual teaching assignments on the subject of color, FB Architektur, Alanushochschule
• Privat and public Collections i.a.:Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Kunsthalle Lübeck. Kunstakademie Düsseldorf