Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo: next stop Hamburg

Bringing together three unsparing chroniclers of their time—Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), and Robert Longo (b. 1953)—PROOF will be on view at Deichtorhallen Hamburg from February 17–May 27, 2018.

Spanning eras and continents, each of the three artists witnessed the turbulent transition from one century to another, experiencing the seismic impacts of revolution, civil unrest, and war. While Goya served church and king, Eisenstein the state, and Longo emerged during the rise of the contemporary art market—the dominant benefactors of each period—they all rose to prominence through developing nuanced practices that challenged expectations and demand.

Looking to innovations in technique and technology, each artist has worked across mediums—from painting and printmaking, to sculpture, film, and performance—but all continuously turn to drawing as a primary tool to articulate thinking. Rendering the societal impact of politics and power in black and white, the artists have diversely experimented with narrative visual forms, beyond traditional reportage, to chronicle events and provide an impassioned portrayal of the world around them.

The exhibition, curated by Robert Longo in collaboration with Kate Fowle, Garage Chief Curator, was first on show in Garage in fall 2016, and then the Brooklyn Museum, New York in fall 2017.

The German premier includes forty of Eisenstein’s sketches from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art that have not been exhibited outside of Russia before. These will be presented alongside a selection of his films that will be projected in slow motion, so that each frame can be experienced as independent images. More than forty of Goya’s aquatint etchings, from all four of his suites, will be loaned from the Morat Institute, and around twenty works by Longo, produced in the last seven years, are loaned from international collections.

A fully illustrated catalogue, Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo with essays by journalist, activist, and author Chris Hedges, Guggenheim Museum Artistic Director Nancy Spector (in English edition); artist Vadim Zakharov; and Kate Fowle, as well as an interview with Robert Longo, is published in Russian and English, to extend the concepts developed in the exhibition.

#proof