12.06.2007 to 07.10.2007
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
The Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin is the only venue in Europe showing this comprehensive retrospective of the American artist Brice Marden, which has previously been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Marden is counted among the most important American artists working in an abstract mode in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
More than 60 works, mainly paintings and some drawings, offer an overview of Marden's work from the early 1960s to the present. The retrospective traces the evolution of the artist, one of the most important exponents of abstract art in the United states, in works spanning more than 40 years of his career. For the first time, Marden's constant exploration of constellations of light, colour, and surface can be appreciated to its full extent.
During the course of his career, Brice Marden (born 1938) has experimented with a variety of materials. He is especially well-known for his fragile wax pictures from the 1960s, painted in a mixture of oil, terpentine and beeswax which lend the surfaces a peculiar, almost tactile appearance (Nebraska, 1966). Gary Garrels, Senior Curator at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, has curated the show in close collaboration with the artist. Marden's work of the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by luminous monochrome panels, can be seen next to his work of the past twenty years. Included are the pictures of the Cold Mountain series (Cold Mountain 2, Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge), 1989-91) which established the artist's acclaim as one of the most important abstract painters of his generation. The exhibition further illustrates how deeply Brice Marden is influenced by the places where he lives and works, by his social connections and cultural encounters. His art calls out to us, encouraging us to question human perception, our own knowledge and individual experiences.
The exhibition is made possible by the Friends of the National Gallery, supported by Deutsche Bank AG.