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until 14.09. | #2534ARTatBerlin | Contemporary Fine Arts presents from 16th August 2019 the exhibition Ferragosto by the artist Edgar Leciejewski.
This is the first exhibition by Edgar Leciejewski with the gallery CFA Berlin.
Fire is an ambiguous phenomenon. In cultural history it stands for both destruction and renewal. In the Middle Ages, for example, fire was regarded as a medium of punishment and purification. As a kind of intermediate realm, it marked the border between paradise as a place of absolute bliss and hell as a place of eternal damnation. In many cultures it is revered as something divine. In China, grieving relatives still burn bundles of so-called “hell money” to provide for their dead relatives in the afterlife and to make the gods merciful.
Some of this magical-transformative power of fire also seems to blaze in Edgar Leciejewski’s new “fabric pictures”. There, forms of still life, assemblage and portrait are pushed over each other like different foils. “Fire takes and gives” says Leciejewski. “In the fire one sees everything. The artist quotes an abundant dozen culturally or socially significant women of the present through pictures in pictures and brings them together in his studio with various decorative fabrics and wax prints. This creates a form of homage to modern heroines, border crossers, artists or pioneers. Many of those depicted here are celebrities such as the political theorist and publicist Hannah Ahrendt, the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, the Chinese film diva Fan Bingbing, the actress Tilda Swinton, the pianist legend Martha Argerich or Valentina Sampaio, the first transgender model to make it onto the cover of “Vogue”. Others come from the artist’s direct circle of friends and acquaintances.
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Edgar Leciejewski, Ei No. 1, 2019, photograph on alu dibond, 139 x 114 x 5 cm / 54 3/4 x 45 x 2 in
Leciejewski understands photography as a passionate and intellectual medium. This is also shown in the series of egg pictures that the photographer produces with the help of a scanner. The close-ups of the everyday, at the same time symbolically highly charged food prove the proverbial uniqueness of each ice cream, even though the photographer is searching in advance for eggs that are as uniform as possible in a protracted search. Eggs can also be found in the large-format bookcase image “Scene in a Library” (2019), a composition enriched with many references and produced with the help of various photographic processes and adaptations. Viewing is also a special form of reading.
Edgar Leciejewski was born in East Berlin in 1977. In 1986 his family moved to the Federal Republic of Germany. After an apprenticeship as a bookseller and his Abitur at the Abendgymnasium (Evening High School), Leciejewski studied theatre studies and philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin from 2001 to 2003 and art at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (HGB) in the classes of Timm Rautert, Christopher Müller and Peter Piller from 2003 to 2011. Since then, his work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions and publications.
Vernissage: Thursday, 15 August 2019, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Thursday, 15 August – Saturday, 14 September 2019
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Image caption: Edgar Leciejewski, Ei No. 1, 2019, photograph on alu dibond, 139 x 114 x 5 cm / 54 3/4 x 45 x 2 in
Exhibition Edgar Leciejewski – Ferragosto – CFA Berlin | Galerieführer Berlin | Contemporary Art Guide | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
