Gallery of the Braunschweig University of Art
Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1
38118 Braunschweig
Germany
Gallery hours: Monday–Friday 1–6 PM, Thursday 1–8 PM
Closed on June 2 (Ascension Day)
Walter Dahn, professor at the Braunschweig University of Art, will be exhibiting paintings on paper beginning May 25, 2011 at the HBK University’s Gallery. A selection of watercolours belonging to a group of artwork with over 1000 pieces and covering close to 40 years will be included. After having two exhibitions and catalogues produced from a selection of this work in 2009 and 2010 under the name “About Today,” a third publication from HBK exhibition with the title “Flowers and Coffee: Paintings on Paper, 1973–2011″ will complete the sequence.
The exhibition will be opened by Professor Dr. Hubertus von Ameluxen, President of the Braunschweig University of Art, on May 24, 2011 at 7 p.m. An introduction will be given by Jean-Christophe Ammann. In addition, there will be a film presentation and discussion.
Walter Dahn, born in 1954, is one of the most meaningful international artists present in contemporary art. He took part in documenta 1982 and in the 1970’s studied under Joseph Beuys at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Together with George Jiri Dokoupil and along with others, Walter Dahn founded the Studio Group “Mühleimer Freiheit,” whose members were known in the 80’s as the “Junge Wilde”. The fundamental strategy in Walter Dahn’s work is his approach or appropriation. At the end of the 1980’s, Walter Dahn turned away from pure or strict painting as a form of expression and replaced expression with selection and composition. Because of his method of arrangement of found objects and colour surfaces, Dahn coined the term “conceptual painting.” His motifs stem from music, film, art history and nature like out of pop culture, kitsch, folk art, ethnology, graffiti, and also the personal environment of the artist. By combining these genres he makes his own “Individual mythology”(Harald Szeemann).
Walter Dahn has taught at the Braunschweig University of Art since 1995 and in 1996 he became a Professor of Painting. For Walter Dahn with the influence of Joseph Beuys extending the concept of art is being a teacher at Braunschweig and a productive part of his artistic work. “Those who speak are the teachers and those who listen are the learners and the relationship can be turned around at any moment.”
