Christiane Baumgartner's IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair Online

IFPDA
Oct 23, 2020 4:25PM

".....my selection today is a brief overview of some works that, for various reasons, touch me or echo something I also investigate: either in color or in gradient, in dealing with materiality and structure, in composition, or simple and poignant in content itself."

IFPDA Executive Director Jenny Gibbs invited artist Christiane Baumgartner to curate a list of selections from the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair online.

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As an artist, you always look at art from a very subjective perspective. It is not the gaze of the collector, who might want to add certain works to an already existing collection, nor is it the gaze of the curator who would also like to bring together different objects into an exhibition concept, or who is looking for works that match or contradict one another in terms of content and form.

The artist's gaze, on the other hand, looks for aspects which are relevant to his or her own work. This often happens unconsciously and mostly things seem interesting that may not be superficially associated with one‘s own practice. One “chews, digests and spits out."

I still remember a time, perhaps 35 years ago, when I practically devoured Expressionist woodcuts and dealt with the question of contrast, the use of black against white surfaces or lines, and the interplay of positive and negative. At that time I also had my Munch, my Klee and my Picasso phase.

That is why my selection today is a brief overview of some works that, for various reasons, touch me or echo something I also investigate: either in color or in gradient, in dealing with materiality and structure, in composition, or simple and poignant in content itself.

Unfortunately, on a two-dimensional screen, it is, of course, not easy to read works on paper or prints – which often leave an “impression“, i.e. a three- dimensionality. Especially, the particular beauty of the etching, the slightly shiny sheen of the plate tone, can hardly be perceived digitally.

I'm sitting in my room in Leipzig, Germany, far away from the New York of fall 2019. The media are afraid of the second corona wave. It's very quiet here. No stress, no flood of communication, more of a self-reflection. I dedicate myself to the “little things”. Nothing will be the same as it used to be. We have grown up, we are perhaps calmer, more thoughtful ... and we have learned that “modern man” is also vulnerable. In any case, the pre-pandemic interpersonal closeness as it once was no longer exists.

I don't really like transferring this mood to my current selection of work from the ifpda online print fair fall 2020. Nevertheless, as I scroll through my completely free and straight selection, I notice that I have made a very calm, almost contemplative, and quite formal choice.

23.10.2020 Christiane Baumgartner

László Moholy-Nagy
"Untitled Composition", 1922
Alice Adam Ltd.
Josef Albers
Segments, 1934
Keith Sheridan, LLC
Georg Baselitz
Schläger, 1986/87
Henze & Ketterer & Triebold
Milton Avery
Trees by the Sea, 1953
Gallery Neptune & Brown
Camille Pissarro
L’île Lacroix, à Rouen, 1887
Harris Schrank Fine Prints
Polly Apfelbaum
Target Practice 6, 2020
Durham Press, Inc.
Fiona Tan (b.1966)
Shadow Archive I-IV, 2019
BORCH
Dieter Roth
Brauner Käfig in blauem (Brown Cage in Blue Cage), 1977/1979
Hauser & Wirth
Helen Frankenthaler
Trial Premonition I/III, 1974-1975
Susan Sheehan Gallery
James Turrell
First Light (Columns), 1989-1990
Susan Sheehan Gallery

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Christiane Baumgartner was born in 1967 in Leipzig, Germany, and studied there at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst before completing her Masters in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London in 1999.

Baumgartner is best known for the monumental woodcuts based on her own films and video stills. She first came to public attention in the UK in EAST international in 2004 and a year later with a major solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. She was included in the groundbreaking exhibition, Eye on Europe, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2006.

White Noise, a major solo retrospective toured to Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière, Belgium, and Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, in 2015 and 2016. Baumgartner has had several solo exhibitions at the Cristea Roberts Gallery and further presentations at Manif d’Art - The Quebec City Biennial, Canada (2019); Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts (2018); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017); Goethe Institute, Hanoi (2012); Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (2011) and Spinnerei archiv massiv, Leipzig (2010). She was awarded the prestigious Mario Avati Printmaking Prize in 2015 by the Académie des beaux-arts, Paris, where she staged her first solo exhibition in France in the same year.

Baumgartner’s work is held in over fifty public collections around the world including the Albertina, Vienna; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and National Gallery Victoria, Australia.

Cristea Roberts Gallery is the worldwide representative for Christiane Baumgartner’s original prints.

Christiane Baumgartner lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.

IFPDA