CARSTEN FOCK

TODAY PAINTING

4 March - 22 April 2006

We are delighted to announce "TODAY PAINTING", the second solo exhibition by Carsten Fock at Jan Winkelmann / Berlin. We would be pleased to welcome you and your friends to the opening at 7 pm on Friday 3 March.

Carsten Fock (b. 1968) is showing new drawings and paintings that have one thing in common: they point towards a description of the state of painting today, and at the same time describe the artist's intensive analysis of his medium.

The exhibition centres around a large-format mural. The mountain massif pictured within provides a formal point of focus and simultaneously, through the significance of its depiction, acts as a point of reference for the content of the entire exhibition.

In dialogue with his own work and his knowledge of art history, Carsten Fock develops autonomous standpoints within the current artistic discourse. In doing so, he processes subjective realisations as well as provoking a mutual exertion of influence between his favoured artistic mediums of drawing and painting. He paints with the dissecting eye of a draughtsman, and draws with the soaring gestures of a painter, combining analytic thought with romantic sensibility.

Carsten Fock's conceptual examination of the themes of painting has been moulded by his artistic socialisation, which took place during the 1980s, and his studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Per Kirkeby. Over the years, the artist has built up his own genealogy within the recent and increasingly not-so-recent history of painting. He has developed his own specific visual language which amalgamates social references, political issues, discourses intrinsic to art, and references to art history, creating an unconventional system of images and pictographs.

A typical element of Fock's work is his use of fragments of texts and words. These fragments are either quotes by artists that are relevant to him, points of reference of his own pop cultural history, or words he has invented himself. However, the texts are often painted over. Sometimes they are still legible, but frequently they can no longer be decoded; they undulate between enigmatic commentaries and guarded slogans, locating themselves as autonomous points of reference in the constant dialogue system of styles, ideas and positions.

The fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm and Carsten Fock have come together to create a women's summer collection for 2006 entitled "super". To celebrate this collaboration, an exhibition will take place at apartment berlin (Memhardstr. 8, Berlin-Mitte) from 18 March to 9 April 2006. We would also be delighted to see you at the opening of this exhibition, at 7 pm on Friday 17 March.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 am - 6 pm.

-> download press release in ENGLISH
-> download press release in GERMAN