Robert Longo

Robert Longo
Of Men and Monsters
Feb. 24 – May 9, 2009

Platz der Republik
60265 Frankfurt/Main
Germany

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Frankfurt’s oldest high-rise has now been successfully modernized, and Cityhaus 1, the second DZ BANK tower, located at Platz der Republik, boasts a new facade. As part of the redesign of the lobby area, new and larger rooms were created, among other things for the DZ BANK [Kunstsammlung] ART FOYER.

The Collection now enjoys in excess of 300 sq. m. exhibition space open to the public – between four and five exhibitions can be held here each year.

The DZ BANK Collection focuses on photographic images in contemporary art and has gone on public show in recent years in the form of various international thematic exhibitions. Most recently, a cross section was shown in 2008 at Städel Museum in Frankfurt – as the Real exhibition. Compared with the Collection, which includes some 6,000 works by over 550 artists, the new ART FOYER may still seem small, but it is quite unique among the venues where corporate collections are displayed in Frankfurt.

It is no coincidence that the first exhibition in the new location entitled Of Men and Monsters concentrates on New York artist Robert Longo (born 1953). It will show works from his three series Monsters (2000), The Freud Cycle (2000) and Men in the Cities (1981/1998). The large-format pieces are IRIS prints and thus, if not strictly speaking photographs, decidedly photographic. Moreover, in particular the Men in the Cities, which date back to snapshots in the early 1980s, relate to a focal point in the Collection, namely the thematic issues of the media, power (violence) and identities, are often addressed under the buzzword ‘postmodernism’ and are reflected in the works of Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Marie-Jo Lafontaine and others.

Robert Longo perhaps stays most clearly rooted in the terrain of New York as an unreal city, as described by authors such as Paul Auster (City of Glass) and Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho). Everything, even nature in the image of the wave (Monsters), appears in Longo’s work as a gesture, as a matter of look and style, and thus as an image. His approach to the figurative is not dissimilar to that of Gerhard Richter (e.g., in the latter’s 18th October 1977 painting cycle), addressing the specific interaction between drawing (painting) and photography, as is highlighted especially in the monumental presence of absence in his Freud cycle. Longo says that what interests him is not least to produce artworks that can stand their ground in the face of TV, films and magazines.

Robert Longo – Of Men and Monsters
Feb. 24 – May 9, 2009

DZ BANK [Kunstsammlung] ART FOYER
Platz der Republik
60265 Frankfurt/Main
Germany
Opening hours:
Tues. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. / closed Sundays and Mondays
Public guided tours take place every Friday at 5.30 p.m.
Please register in advance.
For further details, call +49-69-7447-2386 or mail kunst@dzbank.de
Entrance: Cityhaus 1. from Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage
Nearest public car park: “Westend”