Pedro Cabrita Reis Nan Goldin Justin Matherly

KEWENIG is pleased to present the exhibition, "PEDRO CABRITA REIS, NAN GOLDIN, JUSTIN MATHERLY", and to show these three internationally renowned artists, whose works until now have not yet been exhibited together.

The aesthetic strategies and techniques of the three artists could not be more different upon first glance, however the works by Pedro Cabrita Reis, Nan Goldin and Justin Matherly meet together 0n some rather important points - for example, in their sensibility to the conditions and the particular spirit of place and time, which all three artists manifest in their very own manner, and in their constant balance between fragility and intimacy on the one hand and strength and determination on the other.

Since the early 1990s Pedro Cabrita Reis' work has revolved around themes of dwelling, construction and territory. In addition to works which are based on everyday found objects, such as doors or windows, he repeatedly develops extensive installations that take possession of spaces and places with overwhelming structures. Cabrita Reis' work achieves an atmosphere of emptiness, loneliness and stillness. The stoically thoughtful character of his pieces alludes to the homelessness of man as the basic constant of the human condition and is thus one of the most important guiding themes of his work. The doors are nailed shut, the windows have no view, found tires can no longer roll. Cabrita Reis addresses space and time by considering existential issues of self and cultural memory: "For me, an artwork is a produced reality that focuses the experience of reality as insight", he asserts.

Together with Cabrita Reis' work, we show Nan Goldin's "Irish Landscapes", which were created during her visit to Ireland in 1979 and 2002 and premiered in her first museum exhibition in the Irish Musuem of Modern Art in Dubline last year. While Goldin has become famous for her intense portraits of her friends and lovers since the 1970s, the "Irish Landscapes" show unexpected and almost everyday - rocky landscapes and moving seas from the Donegal, Galway and Dublin areas that are (almost) deserted. Similar to her portraits, the images have the aesthetic of a snapshot, with a very specific sense of colour and light. They are deeply emotionally charged, raw and moving, capturing the lucid moment of their emergence with poignant force.

The sole "figurative" work by Goldin in the exhibition "Dream Grid" (2014), belongs in the broadest sense to the body of work "Scopophilia", on which she has been working since 2010. Like in a frieze, she places together in a picture grid, details of baroque still lifes and nudes from the Louvre, such as "The Rape of Proserpina" (1570) above a sequence of nude portraits of one of her lovers.

The works of the sculptor Justin Matherly shown in the exhibition refer to the philosophy and sculpture of antiquity. His extremely contemporary interpretations of ancient sculpture, such as those of the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius, and his son Telesphorus made from concrete, gypsum and plastic are broken, scratched, porous, and smeared with paint. They rely on medical walking aids that serve as both pedestals and reinforce the impression of fragility in their construction. They appear however to stand in stark contrast to their marble ancestors, they are able to revive their morals and minds with the greatest perseverance and modesty, precisely because of their weaknesses and inadequacies.

Pedro Cabrita Reis (born 1956 in Lisbon, where he lives and works) is one of the most important contemporary portuguese artists. His works have been exhibited in museums such as the Tate Modern, London (2013), the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2011), the M - Museum for contemporary art, Leuven (2011), the Hamburg Kunsthalle (2009/2010), the Carré d'Art, Nîmes (2010), the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2009), the Kunsthaus Graz (2008), the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2006), the Power Plant, Toronto (2014), the Hôtel des Arts, Toulon (2015), the MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2015). He participated in documenta IX and XIV, the São Paulo Biennale (1994 and 1998) and the 10th Biennale de Lyon. In 2003, he represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale, where his work was also present in 2013. In 2017 his work could be seen at the BIENALSUR.

Nan Goldin (born 1953 in Washington D.C., lives and works in New York, Berlin and Paris) is one of the most significant contemporary photographers. Her work has been featured in major retrospectives by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996) and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2001), as well as in exhibitions at SFMoMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Museu Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2002), the C/O Berlin Foundation, Berlin (2009), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2010), the Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2012), the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover (2015), the MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016). In 2006 she was awarded the Order de Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, in 2007 the Hasselblad Award and in 2012 the Edward MacDowell Medaille, amongst others.

Justin Matherly (born 1972 in West Islip, NY, lives and works in New York) studied at the University of Pennsylvania and at Hunter College in New York. In 2017 his sculpture "Nietzsche's Rock" was part of the Skulptur Projekte in Munster. His work has been shown internationally in group exhibitions in museums and institutions: Artists and Poets, secession, Vienna (2015); Vom Großen und Ganzen, Sammlung Haus N, Neumünster (2015); The Camera's Blind Spot, ExtraCity Kunsthal, Antwerp (2015), Stars + Stripes: American Art of the 21st Century from the Goldberg Collection, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bathurst, Australia (2014); A Triple Tour: Oeuvres de la Collection Pinault in La Conciergerie, Paris (2013), among others. He has exhibited solo exhibitions with Paula Cooper Gallery, Galerie Eva Presenhuber and Johann König.