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“Somehow I feel it’s not about the fact that the work itself feels contemporary. It’s that I think it resonates on a really visceral level that all people can relate to.” —Louisa Elderton
The late Norbert Schwontkowski (1949-2013) was a contemporary of legendary German artist Anselm Kiefer, yet he was, as Nancy Princenthal once said in a 2010 Art in America review, “something of that scenery-chewing artist’s polar opposite,” whose work is often characterized by “the avoidance of grandeur.” Later this year, Schwontkowski will be recognized with his largest posthumous institutional exhibitions to date, opening at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in October 2019, and traveling to the Gemeentemuseum den Haag and Kunsthalle Bremen.
On view now through March 7, 2019 at Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery in Berlin is Schwontkowski’s Die von da, the gallery’s sixth exhibition of works by Schwontkowski. Die von da turns its attention to the illuminated openings that recur throughout Schwontkowski’s oeuvre, focusing on paintings made in the last decade of his life. These illuminated thresholds usher us into his melancholy dreamscape, imagining a mirror or a cracked vase as the rabbit holes that could contain its vastness. In this video, art critic Louisa Elderton guides us through the exhibition.
