published at: http://www.tsartprojects.com/#/exhibition/drawings
translated by Tore Süssbier
Exhibition statement for the exhibition DRAWINGS at TS art projects Berlin
Otto Dix is known as an excellent illustrator and left a legacy of more than 6,000 drawings and sketches. Around 1920/21, Dix became the protagonist of a new kind of brutal realism tinged with social criticism and political explosiveness. Antibourgeois stylistic attitudes and realistic pictorial motifs characterize his work, which critics at the time termed “Verism.” A change took place from 1924 and Dix’ drawings, with their neutral succinctness of line, assumed coolly ascertaining features and an affirmative tendency. Dix became a master of New Objectivity, the style of the stabilized Weimar Republic. Nevertheless, his images of a new social reality continue to show his sense of the grotesque and still give an indication of the zeitgeist of that time.
Grotesque shapes also feature in the expressive drawings of the artist Catherine Lorent. Her graphic work contains elements that she uses again and again – on the edge of the genre – for her art: theatrical productions, baroque forms of sculpture, figures, architectural components with contemporary musical instruments such as the rock guitar, which she also plays as a musician. Like her installations, Catherine Lorent’s dynamic image compositions with baroque and contemporary ingredients leave the impression of a bizarre imaginary zeitgeist.
Katia Hermann
