Jrg Immendorff's career reassesses an artist whose period of notoriety in America lasted a relatively short time in the 1980's. This was partly a matter of mistaken identity - he was too closely linked with the neo-expressionist and new image (?) bandwagon prevalent at the time. His connection to direct contemporaries who gained mega-celebrity status, Anselm Keifer and Gerhardt Richter, is also shown to be partly incidental. From this exhibition, Immendorff emerges more fully as an original artist of great complexity. This reevaluation also makes distinctions that remove him from convenient generalizations made about the "postmodern" Eighties, the Trans-Avant-Garde, and art generally, and it illustrates thoroughly the conceptual nature of his work. Born in 1945, Immendorff was of the generation that experienced post-war disillusionment that politicized every waking moment. As a student in the 1960s, he faced the task of examining Germany's tragic history and its fraught relationship with modernity. This forced him to devise a balancing act between eras. Immendorff subsequently takes on the multiple roles of jester, storyteller and historian. He actively participates in a self-conscious continuum of twentieth-century German art while simultaneously throwing stones at the powers that be. After running the full gamut of conceptual work la fluxus, his adoption of painting appears as a sort of purposeful and elaborate bluff. Although this suits his needs, it makes the connection to Ludwig Kirchner and the original German expressionist group die Brcke seem almost superfluous. What comes to the fore instead is a weaving together of political, social and personal myth making. It is the content that matters most, putting him more in line with the social, satirical and metaphorical intents of George Grosz and Max Beckmann respectively. Jorg Immendorff's Biography BIOGRAPHY 1945 Born Bleckede,Germany Currently lives and works in Dsseldorf Jorg Immendorff's most famous accomplishment is his Caf Deutschland series, begun in 1977 and continued through the 1980's. His imaginary nightclub sits on the east-west border, an independent territory where the burlesque theatre of cold-war politics, national identity, and battle of artistic legacy is played out night after night in all its subterfuge and drama. This series of work takes its initial architecture from Renato Guttoso's Caf Greco, but in painting after painting the 'camera angle' shifts, the furniture is rearranged, and the action is captured in contorted perspective of the not-so-innocent bystander. What to Do Next... Jorg Immendorff presents a canvas divided in three parts: labour, knowledge and possibility. His central figure, a goddess-like woman embodying an owl of wisdom, is the icon nurture and virtue, radiant against the bleak background of storm clouds and darkness. Through her flows a stream of fertility and rebirth in the form of labia-like fruits, proffered from the toil of the rural worker. please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jorg_immendorf.htm
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