Showroom Galerie Georg Nothelfer
Grolmanstraße 28
10623 Berlin

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Thu - Fri 12pm - 7pm, Sat 12pm - 6pm
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Galerie Georg Nothelfer is pleased to present sculptures by young artist Mahdad Alizadeh alongside works on paper by Emil Schumacher, one of the most important representatives of German Informel, in the showroom. 

With a cross-generational duet, Mahdad Alizadeh and Emil Schumacher question the here and now in the showroom of Galerie Georg Nothelfer. For this, the image of a common whale song is fitting. Why a whale song? Because, against all categorization, these creatures are simply mammals in the sea. Although they need the air to breathe, they still live exclusively in a different element. This mascot of category refusal, pioneer in species extinction, embodiment of worldly humility is our patron to enter the exhibition sanctuary.
Informal master Emil Schumacher shows drawings selected by Mahdad Alizadeh. The guy, born in Tehran in 1993, who came to Berlin to study, likes Emil, born in Hagen in 1912 and died in Ibiza in 1999, so much that a few sheets of Emil are allowed to find refuge in the installation. Alizadeh changes the floor of the exhibition space and builds on it a rudimentary-looking exhibition architecture made of 900 bricks, on which sculptures made of clay are placed in groups and standing alone. The installation is reminiscent of an infrastructure with baths and bakeries of ancient or early oriental excavation sites. The sculptures do not want to be described. Serious but without authority, unknown forms meet familiar structures or vice versa, it is hard to say.
Sanctuary can be taken to mean both shrine and shelter. Through the title we seemingly get an answer to all the questions that might arise in this space: here is a refuge. And at the same time it opens us the space for associations and possibilities, which move in the indescribable and invisible. Emil Schumacher traveled to Libya and Tunisia in 1962 at the age of 50 in search of this same indescribable, unfamiliar, in order to integrate it into his work and thereby transform it. Mahdad Alizadeh is aware of this as well. His work seems to come from a laboratory of rituals, investigating experiences with the new and the familiar. Perhaps it is a search for universal trust. An important position in our society, which has to deal with the unknown and renegotiate its values. This requires new combinations and connections that can only be found collectively. (Text: Manuel Kirsch)

 

Mahdad Alizadeh (*1993 in Tehran) lives and works in Berlin. He was a master student at the University of the Arts and received a scholarship from the DAAD for his master student exhibition for which he transformed a room into a clayground for his performance Day X. He has already exhibited in the group exhibition HANDS ON THE WALL at KUNSTSAELE BERLIN and was part of the exhibition AROMA MUSA, Torstraße 111. Until January 19th 2022 his sculptures are shown in the exhibtion "Deine Kunst" at Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg. He deals with the haptics and the transformation of earth and creates organic-looking sculptures that seem as if they could develop a life of their own at any moment. Oscillating between figuration and abstraction, they seem like a frozen moment that has halted the movement of matter. Alizadeh moves here in discourses of transience, time, and the capture of the moment, as well as the connection to the organic material, a primordial substance that connects everything.  

 

Emil Schumacher (*1912 in Hagen - †1999 on Ibiza) is one of the most important representatives of German Informel.

Already in the 1950s, influenced by French Tachism and American Action Painting, he developed an independent abstract painting style. His paintings were presented at documenta 2, 3 and 6. The Munich Haus der Kunst showed a retrospective in 1998. In 2009, the Emil Schumacher Museum opened in Hagen. During his life, Schumacher received numerous national and international prizes and awards, including the Guggenheim Award, N.Y. A special feature of Emil Schumacher's vita is his travels to the Orient and the travel paintings that resulted from them. The artist visited archaeological sites he revered early on, such as Assur, Uruk and Hatra. The architecture of fieldstones and clay, which literally merged with nature and the desert environment, exerted a great fascination on the gestural expressive painter.