Reinhard Hauff

Joan Jonas

10 Apr - 12 Jun 2015

© Joan Jonas
White Horse Walking 2
Black and white charcoal on dark grey paper, 48 x 64.5 cm
JOAN JONAS
Circular Revisions - Revisited
10 April - 12 June 2015

Galerie Reinhard Hauff is pleased to announce the fourth solo show with American artist Joan Jonas, who is representing the USA at the 2015 Venice Biennial.

Already in the year 2000—and parallel to Jonas’ important retrospective “Performance Video Installation” at the Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart—the Galerie Reinhard Hauff hosted an exhibition which for the first time was dedicated solely to the artist’s drawings and works on paper. In her work Jonas draws on diverse sources of inspiration, from traditional Japanese Noh to Nordic theatre, and from Homer to the brothers Grimm. But in the creative process of Joan Jonas, drawings rarely serve as sketches, studies or conceptual outlines for finished works. They primarily come into being, as large format ink on paper drawings executed during her performances on stage, and become props and accessories within her distinct and fragmented, scenic choreography. The authentic gesture of brush strokes on large surfaces are powered by the energy and rhythm of the source material in the performance.

Located somewhere between what could be called documentary work, presentation of autonomous artworks and the transformation of the temporary performances into the more or less permanent form of an installation, the works on view in this show offer a fascinating insight into the artist’s creative process in which accessories and traces of earlier performances are not treated as mere relics of a long, complete and closed past, but, instead, can rather be characterized as traces of life at both ends of the spectrum—Then and Now.

Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York, where she lives and works. Her works and performances have been featured in major institutions worldwide, including the MoMa, New York (2009-2010), the MACBA, Barcelona (2008) and in the Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2006). She participated in the Venice Biennial (2009) and showed at documenta in Kassel a record six times (1972,1977,1982, 1987, 2002, 2013). In 2009 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guggenheim Museum. She is representing the United States at the 2015 Venice Biennial.
 

Tags: Joan Jonas