About Sophie von Hellermann - A German Artist at the saatchi-gallery

Stefan Kurten garden proliferates with all the excess of Victorian design; his intricate gold and green leaves pile with the flat intensity of a fashionable orientalism. Detailed to the point of decadence, Kürten flits effortlessly between geometry and chaos, painting a monument to the careful control of disorder. Systemising the slow process of decay, he transforms it into something cherished and savoured.

Stefan Kurten’s scenes of suburban idyll radiate with pastoral pleasure, thinly concealing neurotic obsession. A neighbourhood of same-box houses, on closer inspection, breaks down into an endless diamond grid. The repetitive pattern of the fence becomes the dappled sunblind sky, newly mown grass and texture of the shadows. Kürten’s mosaic-like brushwork seems not just to paint colour, but light itself. He offers painting as repose: beauty as escapism, a small meditation on the mundane goodness of simple things.

In The Handsome Family, Kürten turns his hand to the supernal quality of modernism. Kürten wields his repetitive forms with the subtlety of Matisse: not initially obvious, but once spotted they appear everywhere. Geometric outlines of the architecture and furniture mix effortlessly with the organic curves punctuating the room. Kürten effuses light throughout with the omni-present speckles of pointillism, replicating a tree, cloudy sky and stucco. His slice of suburbia resounds with a cosmic rhythm, as perfect as nature itself.

Stephan Kürten’s paintings adopt a Renaissance era concept of beauty as mathematical precision. The finite qualities of science provide a working model for visual harmony and spiritual enlightenment. In Silence, Kürten bases his composition on the classical proportion of the Golden Mean. Disclosing this rectangular purity in the grid-like perspective of the building, Kürten repeats this Utopian ratio throughout; the organic disposition of the foliage yields to the refined rules of culture. In painting the precarious balance between nature and civilisation, Kürten finds affinity in its perfection of order.

In Stefan Kurten’s Heartbeat, a backyard jungle creeps, as if by alchemic force, from the thick metallic ground. Possessing the divine quality of religious illuminations, Kürten’s gold paint suggests both richness of spirituality and material wealth. Kürten approaches the experience of painting as meditation: each twig, leaf and fruit, painstakingly painted with jewel-like effect, radiating with its own entrancing power. In this rustic Shangri-la, Kürten unleashes the awesome wonder in the nature of small things.

Read Entire Article about Stefan Kurten or looking for his paintings and his exhibitions please visit us on
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/stefan_kurten.htm

The video calls attention to its "magical" ability to transform masked actors into bitchy models, costumes into couture, and props into works of art as, despite the idyllic setting, a cast of self-involved "beautiful people" perform a dystopian fable of social inaction. Situated in an adjacent gallery, Circle Sculpture, 2003, is a mod painted partition of open circles with reflective foil surrounding each void. It appears in the video as a prop and as a transition/partition between shots.

Education

1999 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California

1996 Akademiebrief at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf

1994 Master Student, Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (MFA)

Awards

1997 DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)/ Fulbright, Yearlong Fellowship to
study in the US Förderpreis des Ruhrpreises für Kunst und Wissenschaft der Stadt Mülheim an der Ruhr (prize for emerging artists)

1998 Resident at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah

2000 Tirana Biennale 1, interview with Paul Quiñones
Bruce Hainley, Artforum, April

Julie Deamer, Flashart, March/April
I-D Magazine, The Gallery Issue
Malik Gaines, Art and Text, May
Malik Gaines, essay about the show at the Guggenheim Gallery of the Chapman
University

Doug Harvey, LA Weekly, November 26 - December 2
David Pagel, Los Angeles Times, July 30
Great God Pan, number thirteen, publication of drawings
Christopher Smith, The Salt Lake Tribune, July

2001 Matthew Coolidge, CLUI Newsletter

2002 Martin Pesch, Frieze, November


The frankly decorative masks are on display too, but they're in the same room as the video, where they serve to heighten the tension between sculpture and prop. (Is a mask supposed to be looked at or through?) Constructed from earthy green and rust orange paper, as well as cardboard, foil, felt, and a few sets of eyeballs lifted from fashion magazines, the masks are kooky yet uncannily familiar, suggesting the ambitions of rainy day craft projects.

Read Entire Article about Alice Könitz and source of thios article is from The saatchi-Gallery
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/alice_konitz.htm

The Saatchi Gallery is pleased to present Both Ends Burning, an exhibition of new work by Amy Bessone, Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan and Lara Schnitger.

Thomas Houseago's Biography and Exhibitions

BIOGRAPHY

1972 Born in Leeds
Lives and works in Los Angeles

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2007
David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

2004
Solo presentation, Art Brussels, with gallery Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium

2003
Thomas Houseago, I Am Here, Selected Sculptures 1995-2003, S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium

2002
Xavier Hufkens, (w/Amy Bessone), Brussels, Belgium

2000
Something to Be, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

1996
Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Mum's tattoo, Si en La, (w/Matthew Monahan, guest curator: Luc Tuymans), Antwerp, Belgium

After living and working in various countries after their time in Amsterdam, the four are once again in the same location, Los Angeles. Both Ends Burning is the first exhibition of all the artists together. Bessone, Houseago, Monahan and Schnitger are dedicated to exploring and challenging notions of the figure. Finding a lack of rigor in current trends regarding figuration they look to face their practices without ironic distractions.

Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan and Lara Schnitger will each be presenting new sculpture and Amy Bessone will show new paintings. Amy Bessone had a solo exhibition (with Thomas Houseago) at Gallery Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium and was in the group show b.a.-ba, un choix dans la collection du Frac Bretagne, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, France.

what to Do Next...

Read more information about Thomas Houseago paintaings and ehibitions at
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/thomas_houseago.htm

Sophie von Hellerman is a young German artist working in London. The title of the painting Christo Paffgen is the real name of Warhol protégé, Velvet Underground vocalist, and unrepentant lifelong heroin addict Nico. The 1960s icon was infamous for her sexual endeavours and drug abuse. Rather than capture Nico in all her excess von Hellermann chooses to depict her before she lost her beauty, interest in life, and eventually her death in relative obscurity, and mystery, in Ibiza in 1988.

BIOGRAPHY

1975 Born in Munich
Lives and works in London

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005
Sophie von Hellermann, Greene Naftali, New York

2004
On The Ground, Vilma Gold, London
Sophie von Hellermann, Ghislaine Hussenot Gallery, Paris
Sophie von Hellermann, Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles
Sophie von Hellermann, Vacio 9, Madrid

2003
Sophie von Hellermann, Jablonka Linn Luhn Jablonka, Cologne

2001
Sophie von Hellermann, Kunstverein Konstanz, Germany
Vusering Hites, Vilma Gold, London
Saatchi Gallery Presents Sophie von Hellermann, London
Sophie von Hellermann, Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2005
Group show, Linn Luhn Jablonka, Cologne
Clarke & McDevitt present, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Dublin POST MoDERN, Greene Naftali, New York

2004
The Drawing Project, Vamiali's, Athens
Group Show, Marcc Fox, Los Angeles
Mothers, Oh! Art, London
Britannia Works, British Council, Athens

2003
Art and Mountains, The Alpine Club, London
Hydrophobia, Henry Peacock Gallery, London

2002
Dear Painter, paint me..., Pompidou Centre, Paris
Group show, Lombard Freid, New York
Group show, Artagents Gallery Hamburg
Group show, Ghislaine Hussenot Gallery, Paris
Mediated Cooperation, collaboration with Johannes Maier
OBERWELTE, Stuttgart, Germany
We all Love... The Mission, London
Electric Show, The Great Eastern Hotel, London

2000
Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

1999
Grup show , Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam
Weltausstellung 99/robolove, koelnerstrasse, Dusseldorf
Troublespot.Painting, curated by Luc Tymans and Narcisse Tordoir
NICC and Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium
von Hellermann , Gerhard Richter, Chris Ofili, Paul Morrison, Michael Raedecker, Luc Tymans, Michaelangelo Pistoletto, Marlene Dumas, Kippenberger, Laurence Weiner,Felix Gonzalez-torres, Elsworth Kelly, Robert Ryman, Vincent Geyskens, Ugo Rondinone, John Currin, Robert Gober and Andy Warhol
Conclusion:
At first glance Thomas Helbig’s sculptures appear to be futuristic ruins; bizarre and broken finds hinting at some remote gothic civilisation, glorifying its defunct authority.

Vilma Gold is pleased to present, On the Ground, by Sophie von Hellermann, the inaugural exhibition at new premises on Vyner Street, London E2. Staged prior to the gallery's formal renovation, On the Ground weaves new paintings into the existing fabric of the semi-derelict building.

what to Do Next...

Read more information about Sophie von Hellerman paintaings and ehibitions at
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/sophie_hellermann.htm