Andreas Amrhein – Time is on my side
Arbeiten auf Papier/Works on paper

 
11. Juli – 29. August 2020/July 11 – August 29, 2020
Soft Opening: Freitag, 10. Juni 2020, 17–21 Uhr/Friday, July 10, 2020, 5-9 pm
 
Öffnungszeiten: Mittwoch – Freitag 12-18 Uhr; Samstag 12-16 Uhr u. n. V.
Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday 12-6 pm; Saturday 12-4 pm or by appointment

Andreas Amrhein, who has been an integral part of our gallery program from the very beginning, is now hosting his 4th solo exhibition with us. In his current series of works on paper, he adds a decisive element to the sampling typical of his pictorial work, in which he mixes personal memories with icons from the world of comics and advertising, porcelain figures and banal everyday objects to create an open story. In a remix, he uses etchings that he printed himself shortly after finishing his studies at the HdK and now creates new works with the current overpaintings and his visual vocabulary developed over decades. The term, which originates from musical pop culture, allows for the most diverse nuances: “A cautious change, which moves relatively close to the original … or a completely reinterpreted collage, which mostly … only contains fragments of the original”( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix, 11.6.2020) Thus we find works such as “Louis XIV Cherokee Gate”, in which Amrhein uses only one object, an old armchair drawn with great attention to detail, on which an etching is still clearly visible. In other works, the graphic disappears completely, except for a few lines, under numerous topoi of Amrhein’s pictorial world. In addition to familiar icons such as Miss Muffins, the farmer’s house, or the cowboy, which often originate from the American clichéd world, new motifs appear, such as meticulously drawn fruit and vegetables or the No-No Hand, a small figure that performs the same hand movement as the legendary Japanese waving cat.
After around 30 years of artistic activity, the remix allows Amrhein, with his own ironic view of the interdependencies of our global world, to deal with the subject matter in a more experimental and relaxed way than ever before: “Time is on my side”: the artist remains true to himself and surpasses himself. In addition to echoes of Pop Art, elements of graffiti can also be found in Amrhein’s visual cosmos. The artist consequently enriches the exhibition presentation with a few wall drawings.
1963 born in Marburg; childhood in Liberia/West Africa; 1985-1992 studied fine arts at the Berlin University of the Arts; 1992 master’s degree with Walter Stöhrer; study visits to London, Malmö, Chicago; scholarships and others: Lofoten, Paris, China; collections and others: Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin; Museums of the City of Malmö, Sweden, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA; Museums of the City of Bamberg; Montblanc Collection Beijing.