In this lecture, Irina Kulik will talk about artists whose works blend history, contemporaneity and myths.
Neo Rauch (b. 1960) is a German painter and a lecturer at Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, where he also studied. Having started out in East Germany, he was influenced by socialist realism along with surrealism and pop art. His large works are constructed as collages of different stories, styles and eras. Works by Neo Rauch have been acquired by Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980) rose to international acclaim in 2011, when his works were featured at the 54th Venice Biennale, where he represented Argentina. A year later his sculptures of cement, clay and wood were exhibited in a park in Kassel: his installation Return the World was one of the most memorable exhibits at documenta 13. In 2015 he was among the stars of the Istanbul Biennial. Although they look like ruins of ancient civilizations or props from an abandoned film set, Rojas’s clay sculptures are not meant to last, as he never fires them to underscore the transience of material culture.
