Lothar Hempel:
Songs for the Blind
25 April–29 May 2013
Hezi Cohen Gallery
54 Wolfson St.
Tel Aviv 66042
Israel
Hezi Cohen Gallery is pleased to present Songs for the Blind, the first solo exhibition in Israel for the acclaimed Berlin artist Lothar Hempel.
Lothar Hempel’s works combine sculpture and photography, applying them to a set of aesthetic criteria which echo both cinema and theater. Generally speaking, Hempel’s signature works are free-standing cuttings of photographic enlargements, which capture and freeze the motion of individuals or groups in the middle of performative gestures or actions. The photographic sculptural enlargements, whose sources remain mostly unidentified, each play a role in flat hybridized sculptural constellations, partially re-presenting and re-playing the original photographed events, bringing them back into three-dimensional space and back to life-size measurements.
Songs for the Blind is the title Hempel chose for his new group of works, specially prepared for the occasion of his first solo exhibition at Hezi Cohen Gallery. The title reflects his ongoing interest in performance and music as sources of inspiration. It also signifies a rift between the senses, addressing the transmission of sound to those who cannot see. This transmission of audible experience indicates the lack of sight and compensates for it. Unlike the sound-image relationship in cinema, Hempel describes his sound as a substitute for visual image (not as its companion). The title suggests a negative condition masked by a positive occurrence; that is, the lack of sight accompanied by sound and music. This may serve as an interpretive key to understanding the mode of appearances in Hempel’s works, which manifests and thematizes the shift between absence and presence, between invisibility and visibility.
Lothar Hempel (b. 1966, Cologne), lives and works in Berlin. His previous exhibitions include Modern Art, London (2012); Anton Kern Gallery, New York (2011); Art : Concept, Paris (2012), as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2008); and MoMA PS1 (2001). A retrospective show of his works was held in 2007 at Le Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), FRAC – Poitou-Charentes, Angouleme, France, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Saatchi Gallery, London.
Read more about the exhibition here.
For further information please contact:
Oren Hadar, Director, info [at] hezicohengallery.com / T 972 3 693 8788 /
M 972 54 4663 692
