Motions of Matter

18 February to 8 April 2023 ⟶ Galerie & Showroom

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Stella Geppert, COMMUNICATION CAPTURES, 2019, Dansehallerne co DEN FRIE, Centre of Contemporary Art, Kopenhagen, Partizipational Choreography, Photo: Tim Nowitzki

Lázló Lakner, Ezra's LXVIII Canto, 1983-1989, Mixed media, canvas, 200 x 155 cm. Photo: Katrin Rother. Courtesy Galerie Georg Nothelfer and the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Stella Geppert, Talk with TT, Berlin, 2014, 45 min, Charcoal, paper, 150 x 150 cm, Photo: Thomas Bruns, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Gerhard Hoehme, 1986, Durchpulst und umpaust, Acrylic, canvas, PE-tubes, 240 x 140 cm, Photo: Katrin Rother

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother.

Mahdad Alizadeh, where the pain flows there is a river, 2019/2022. Clay, wood, 160 x 60 x 52 cm, Base: 160 x 49 x 40 cm. Courtesy the artist

Stella Geppert, MM_Stomach, Series H-MM-A-ZI-E, 2022, Organmassage, charcoal, strings, canvas, 70 x 100 cm, External dimensions 80 x 100 cm, Photo: Eric Tschernow, Courtesy the artist

Stella Geppert, A_Heart, Series H-MM-A-ZI-E, 2022, Organmassage, charcoal, strings, canvas, 70 x 100 cm, External dimensions 80 x 100 cm, Photo: Eric Tschernow, Courtesy the artist

Mahdad Alizadeh, Null, 2023, Clay, wood, tape, 97 × 155 × 63 cm, Table: 96 x 62 x 152 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Mahdad Alizadeh, only when the moon shines, 2022, Glazed clay, wood, 38 x 25 x 28 cm, Base: 200 x 40 x 40 cm. Courtesy the artist

Henri Michaux, Untitled, 1962, Mixed media, arches, velin, 74,8 x 106,1 cm

Stella Geppert, from the Series Re Construction of Touch, Dans le corps des autres qui m'ont touché un jour, 2020, Charcoal, chalk, clothes, limewood, metal, paper, 195 x 163 cm, Photo: Eric Tschernow, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Georges Noël, Me Souvenant de la Madeleine, 1997, Mixed media, canvas, 80 x 65 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Georges Noël, Soleil boreal, 1989, Mixed media, canvas, 162 x 162 cm

Stella Geppert, Touche Par Les Poumons, 2020, Charcoal dust, paper, breath, 35 cm x 25 cm, Photo: Eric Tschernow, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Stella Geppert, Climbing Up Together, Series: Two Feet Seven Inches, 2018, Copenhagen, Performative sculpture, Clay, approx. 90 x 60 x 50 cm. Courtesy the artist

Stella Geppert, IMMERSION, 05, 2021, Sleepdrawing, pastel chalk, graphite, paper, 6 hours, 150 x 225 cm, Photo: Eric Tschernow, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Stella Geppert, The Gestures of the Organs, LUNGS, 2021, Charcoal dust, wax, paper, 20 x 20 cm, Courtesy the artist

Stella Geppert, The Gestures of the Organs, THIN DARM, 2021, Charcoal dust, wax, paper, 20 x 20 cm, Courtesy the artist

Mahdad Alizadeh, Linsh, 2017, Clay, 30 x 27 x 34 cm, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Henri Michaux, Untitled, 1973, Mixed media, paper, 38 x 28 cm

Henri, Michaux, Untitled, 1973, Mixed media, paper, 32 x 24 cm

Mahdad Alizadeh, deleted messages!, 2023, Glazed clay, 27 x 50 x 20 cm, Table: Wood, tape, wooden skewer, 86 x 74 x 47 cm. Courtesy the artist

Gerhard Hoehme, Untitled, 1970,Mixed media, glossy paper, 41 x 31 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

László Lakner, Untitled, 1983, Mixed media/collage/paper, 41 x 29 cm

László Lakner, Mahler, 1985, Mixed media/paper, 20.5 x 21.5 cm (SOLD)

Stella Geppert, Collective Star, Series: Two Feet Seven Inches, 2018, Copenhagen, Performative sculpture, Clay, approx. 50 x 60 x 30 cm. Courtesy the artist

Installation View Showroom Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Henri Michaux, Untitled, approx. 1974, Acrylic, hand made paper, 56 x 37,5 cm

Georges Noël, hokaido landscape, 1989, Mixed media, canvas, 117 x 89 cm

Stella Geppert, Another Kind of Documentation, 2016, Ceramics, tripod, dimensions varying, Photo: Thomas Bruns, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Showroom Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Mahdad Alizadeh, interiorly exterior, 2021, Clay, approx. 30 x 40 x 25 cm, Courtesy the artist

Installation View Showroom Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Katrin Rother

Gerhard Hoehme, Sammi, 1962, Acrylic, canvas, 170 x 130 cm

Stella Geppert, Serie Re Construction of Touch, „Dans le corps des autres qui m’ont touché un jour“, 2020, Charcoal, chalk, graphite on paper, clothing, metal, limewood, 195 x 163 cm

The exhibition MOTIONS OF MATTER puts painterly positions of the Informel, current sculptures by Mahdad Alizadeh and performative works by the sculptor Stella Geppert into an exciting exchange. The interplay of aesthetic similarities is immediately striking. A free ductus, which resists a strict shaping of form, manifests as visual means and as a dynamic principle, and thus dominates the artistic works. The processual is the pivotal point of this cross-generational dialogue. The process remains visible in the drawings, paintings and sculptures as a trace, gesture or direct expression. In classics such as László Lakner or Georges Noël, this is evident in scriptural pictorial elements, scratchings, or procedures such as écriture automatique.

Stella Geppert explores the changing relationship between artistic material and body movement as a pictorial process in a performative way. In the center of the gallery are two sculptures of the Hieroglyphic Ceiling series (2019) installed. During the performance COMMUNICATION CAPTURES, the space-consuming work captures verbally and nonverbally triggered movements of the head while talking, in drawings. Performers, equipped with a stick on their heads, which reaches up to the paper ceiling of the room construction, interact with each other. A piece of charcoal is attached to the top of the headgear, which incessantly traces the movements of the participants.

Durchpulst und umpaust (1986) by Gerhard Hoehme is directly juxtaposed with Stella Geppert's performative sculpture. The large-format all-over painting, whose restless density of red-brown brushstrokes only fades into bright blue at the edges of the canvas, is an impressive example of how Hoehme triggers various visual perceptions in the viewer. In addition to distanced vision, the intention is to stimulate haptic vision that activates the sense of touch. Three long plastic cords in red, blue and light green, which leave the framing of the picture and extend it into space, reinforce the communicative effect of the picture and Hoehme's reception-aesthetic intention. Furthermore, the cords in their colorfulness are reminiscent of modeled representations of the human circulatory system. The image becomes a physical counterpart for the viewer.

The clay works of Mahdad Alizadeh can also be related to physical qualities. In their direct shaping, they initially evoke archaic sculptures, but at the same time can be imagined as futuristic organ proliferations. "Null" (2023), a work which exploded in the kiln, is sorted fragmentarily on a table, as if in an archaeological excavation. The fragments are a memento mori and at the same time testify to the potential power of matter.

Alizadeh's sculptures enter into direct dialogue with Stella Geppert's charcoal drawings, in which she stimulates her organs with the help of a massage and sound technique and thereby tactile movements into the canvas indirectly. The black-and white images could be read as x-rays, except that here the interior of the body is not x-rayed but felt.

Overcoming fundamental dichotomies such as body and mind, which have defined Western thought since the Renaissance, was an important aspiration of many informal artists. The oscillation of images between material presence and immaterial signs, that can be perceived throughout the exhibition, testifies to these efforts. Henri Michaux's poetic works on paper as notations of an unconscious, inner state are paradigmatic of such. Stella Geppert's performative drawing techniques, working with the intelligence of the body, are also a practice to explore the entanglement of matter and mind in their possibilities. In encountering the works of Informel, she thus simultaneously updates, dynamizes, and expands a field of discourse that has been virulent since postwar modernism.

Text (translated from German original): Charlotte Silbermann

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