SAATCHI GALLERY
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SELECTED WORKS BY Franz Ackermann


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Franz Ackermann

Mental Map: Evasion V

1996
Acylic on Canvas

275 x 305cm

In Mental Map: Evasion V, Ackermann creates a biotic abstraction, a template for natural phenomena dictated by design. His jumbled composition is harmonious in its turmoil: concentric patterns of colour expose hints of identifiable place (a street map, a building interior, a snippet of landscape) only to dislocate them in a maze of organic generalisations.

Constructed graphics are corroded, integrated as if by evolution, to incorporate somatic qualities: sublime contemplation is achieved only through artificial enhancement.


Franz Ackermann

Mental Map: Evasion VI

1996
Acylic on Canvas

195 x 210cm

Evasion VI is less a representation of a specific place than an eruption of global confusion. Wild blasts of colour rip tangled organic masses apart. Amid the wreckage are tiny vignettes of landscape displaced from their natural setting. Ackermann’s painting has an undertone of catastrophe: desert sunsets, rocky coves, and industrial parks clash together like tectonic plates in an ethical snafu. Through his unbridled abstraction, Ackermann strives to chart out the physical impossibility of conceptual space. Evasion VI reconstructs our chaotic perception of the world as an apocalyptic image-byte.


Franz Ackermann

New Building

1999
Oil on Canvas

260 x 200cm

Ackermann paints New Building as a package holiday resort spiralling out of control. Destination: doesn’t matter. This exact development could be found anywhere. His warped perspective and candy-coloured banners compose an off-kilter composition, both unsettling and jubilant.

A triumph of marketing over nature, his hard-edged abstraction springs like Poseidon’s gift from the sea: the new universal symbol for ‘beach’.


Franz Ackermann

The Secret Tunnel

1999
Oil on Canvas

260 x 200cm

Ackermann’s cityscape is information overload: a seething metropolis striated in Technicolor glory. Grey modernist architecture looms at an unnatural angle, engulfed in retro-style smog, while an inverted stairway to heaven descends into the open earth below. Ackermann paints his underworld as a spacey utopia: fiery blobs of magma swell with hypnotic seduction, revealing a virgin landscape at their core. The Secret Tunnel
is not a paradise, but an upper and middle earth equally and oppositely attractive.


Franz Ackermann

Zooropa

2001
Oil on Canvas

200 x 250cm

Ackermann is a perpetual tourist: his paintings are like large trippy postcards from the edge. Dealing with globalisation and the commodification of cultural landscape, his work is representative of an ever-shrinking world.
Referring to his images as ‘mental maps’, Ackermann readily digests the subtle nuances of popular destinations
and regurgitates them as international signifiers: brightly coloured shapes, high-impact graphics, and pop iconography.


Franz Ackermann

Helicopter XVI (on the balcony)

2001
Oil on Canvas

287 x 278cm

In Helicopter, Ackermann presents a gyrating distortion. Glimpsed from above, his ‘map’ is more graphic than topographical: any sense of real space has been compressed to the flatness of a logo. Among the steely refined greys of a mountainside reclusion are the stripy steppes of a vineyard and a plastic sunset. It’s only the ‘flat-pack’ patio furniture that suggests a luxury villa and not just the abstraction of affluence.



ARTIST INFORMATION




Franz Ackermann's BIOGRAPHY






1963
Born in Neumarkt St Veit, Germany

1984-1988
Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich

1989-1991
Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Hamburg Currently lives and works in Berlin

SELECTED
SOLO EXHIBITIONS


2004
nonstop with the hhc Gavin Brown's enterprise,
New York
travelantitravel neugerriemschneider, Berlin

2003
Naherholungsgebiet Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg
Eine Nacht in den Tropen Kunsthalle, Nürnberg

2002
Basel Public Wandinstallation Nordtangente,
Basel
The Waterfall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Seasons in the sun Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

2000
B.I.T . Castello di Rivoli, Turin
welt 1... and no one else wanted to play Meyer Riegger Galerie,
Karlsruhe

1999
OFF Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel
Trawler Mai 36 Galerie, Zürich

1998
Pacific White Cube, London
Songline Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen

1997
unexpected Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

unerwartet Portikus, Frankfurt

1996
Das weiche Zimmer neugerriemschneider, Berlin

SELECTED
GROUP EXHIBITIONS


2005
Works on Paper Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin Colours
and Trips Knstlerhaus Palais, Thurn

2004
Champs de vision Musée des Beaux Arts,
Rouen
Monument to now Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens

2003
A New Modernism For A New Millennium: Abstraction
and Surrealism Are
A Nova Geometria Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São
Paulo
Un-built cities Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn
Supernova: Art of the 1990s from the Logan Collection Museum
of Modern Art, San Francisco
Hands up, baby, hands up! Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg

Global Navigation System Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2003
Dreams and Conflicts - The Viewer's Dictatorship
Venice Biennale

2002
Psychodrome 02 Fundació Juan Miró,
Barcelona
En Route Serpentine Gallery, London
8th Baltic Triennial of International Art Contemporary Art
Centre, Vilnius
Drawing now – eight positions Museum of Modern Art,
Long Island City
XXV Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo

2001
Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Museo
de Arte Moderno, Mexico
EU Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Hybrids Tate Liverpool, Liverpool

 
 

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