2020 at the SCHIRN, we are already fans!

More than any other artist of his time, Richard Jackson (*1939) has focused his attention on the radical expansion of painting. The American artist pushes the formal boundaries of the picturesque and creates situations, which link the application of the paint through the use of machines to its processual aspect. For the first time, the Schirn is assembling five of his altogether twelve characteristic Rooms – room installations based on the principle of automated painting. Some of them are walk-in installations, while others can be viewed only through windows or peepholes. 

Jackson combines critical commentaries on painting with social contexts, pairing them with provocative wit and ambiguities, as well as references to iconic works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. Inside the rooms, comic-like figures, animals, or objects become the protagonists in a unique process in which air compressors and pumps cause rich colors to flow through tubes and funnels, through ears, mouths, and other body orifices and spread them across the floor, walls, furnishings, and the protagonists themselves. The thematic rooms document a painting process which is detached from the artist and expands into the spatial. By the time visitors enter the space, it is all over. They become the investigators of the previous spectacular painting act and voyeurs of bizarre scenarios.

The expansive installations of Ramin Haerizadeh (*1975), Rokni Haerizadeh (*1978), and Hesam Rahmanian (*1980) transport the viewer into a highly distinctive world. Exuberant and almost baroque, their installations are nonetheless humorous, eccentric, and full of allusions. The base and center of the artistic trio is their house in Dubai in which they live and work together. It is here that all their films, installations, artworks, and exhibitions originate-frequently in exchange with friends or other artists.

In their definition of the collective, the Iranian artists all work in their own particular style, together and independently of each other. The surprising encounters thus created direct attention toward urgent contemporary political and social topics and question power mechanisms, as well as normative gender roles and the art world. The Schirn is presenting the first solo exhibition by the artists in Germany, in which they combine new and existing works to create a sensuous experience as part of their strategy to link different artistic realities.

Ancient forests in remote regions, majestic vistas of the Arctic, the magic of the northern lights—Canadian modernist painting conceives a mythical Canada. At the beginning of the twentieth century, artists such as Franklin Carmichael, Emily Carr, J.E.H. MacDonald, Lawren S. Harris, Edwin Holgate, Arthur Lismer, Tom Thomson, and F.H Varley ventured, full of pictorial experimentation, away from urban centers and deep into the nature. They sought to create a new pictorial vocabulary for a young nation coming into its own cultural identity. In a captivating visual language, these paintings and sketches epitomize the dream of a “new” world, constructing the idyll of a magnificent landscape beyond the reality of the Indigenous population, modern city life, and the expanding industrial exploitation of nature.

On the occasion of Canada being Guest of Honour at the 2020 Frankfurt Book Fair, the Schirn will be presenting major aspects of Canadian modern landscape painting from a current-day standpoint, bringing together principal works from major Canadian collections, which are on view in Germany for the first time. Featuring some 80 paintings and 40 sketches, as well as photographs, films, and documentary material, this comprehensive exhibition will examine and critically review the works by artists around the The Group of Seven, which are extremely popular in Canada. As a counter-narrative, that has equal resonance in Canada, the show will include Indigenous perspectives and address issues surrounding the formation of national identities.

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) is regarded as the poet among the artists of modernism. In a major exhibition, the Schirn sheds light on a so far little-known side of his oeuvre: Chagall’s works of the 1930s and 1940s, in which the artist’s colorful palette becomes darker. The life and work of the Jewish painter were profoundly affected by the art policies of the National Socialists and the Holocaust. By the early 1930s, Chagall’s works were already examining the increasingly aggressive anti-Semitism in Europe, and he finally emigrated to the United States in 1941.

During these years, his art works touch on central themes such as identity, homeland, and exile. With more than 100 haunting paintings, works on paper, photos, and documents, the exhibition traces the artist’s search for a pictorial language in the face of expulsion and persecution. It presents important works from the 1930s, like “The Falling Angel” (1923/1933/1947). Altogether, the Schirn will provide a new and highly relevant view of the oeuvre of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.