Artnews.org: Norbert Witzgall

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Norbert Witzgall

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"There are different sources of pictorial motivation in my life. One is my protestant farmer childhood background where I was told to keep away from admiring pictures of a popular nature; I thus developed a secret addiction to pictures so images I had been looking at initiated my “socialization”.

The first source of imagery came in the form of countless photographs from the family albums and the stories attached to them. With the myths that were cast upon them, they seemed to represent, in these half-truths, class and role models that constructed identity – that of the portrayed as well as that of the beholder. These role models loomed in all the other photographic images that caught my attention in childhood: in advertising campaigns, TV-series and the (American) cinema, the pop culture cosmos.

The ghostlike and immaterial clichés of photography are still the main source for the images I try to reproduce. These pictures always show bodies and moments that passed a long time ago. The desire to reach the unreachable, the past, becomes greater in proportion to the impossibility of doing so. To lose myself in a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore, or never existed the way it is depicted, attracts me.

By working with these beautiful shadows I try to get rid of them.
I could describe my process as a form of exorcism.
The precise moment of wiping out these images is the reason why I paint.
Covering and hiding, canceling the primary image is also a way to address my constant doubt in relation to painting, its validity as a contemporary artistic medium. The first stage entails painting the „ideal“ picture: here I try to stick to a stiff academism. The use of stale bourgeois techniques, such as oil glazes or soft pastels, really interests me- in their obsoleteness they implicate a slight irony and maybe a certain feeling of vengeance. (Norbert Witzgall)
~

With pressed flowers, ribbons, broken tiles, dust, incisions on the canvas or board, Norbert Witzgall brings a new inflection to “realist painting”- he reincarnates nineteenth century academic painting, Hollywood head-shots, photographs of lovers, family members, artist friends in his paintings with a dandyish flair and an attitude that is at once iconolatric and iconoclastic. The whimsical addition of elements on the surface of the works -and conversely the subtraction when it comes to slashes or faceless bodies- never compromises the intensity of his representations but it nods half-mischievously half-seriously to a tradition that looms large, dies and is reborn every few seasons.

There is a kinship to early 20th century attitudes of satire and insolence that could be situated at the cusp of Dada and Surrealism (Jean Arp’s reliefs and works on paper, Max Ernst’s frottages and collages, Francis Picabia’s “Transparences”) but also to Joseph Cornell’s’ nostalgic, Victorian bric-a-brac assemblages as Witzgall often incorporates objects found in thrift stores in his art works.

For his first solo exhibition with Nice & Fit we are presenting a new body of work that includes paintings on canvas and board, works on paper and assemblages. The title of the exhibition sets sonic associations: from his deep interest in photography (by referencing British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron) to the nostalgic carelessness of John Hughes’ 1986 teenage movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (via a character named “Cameron”) and the bi-gender nature of the name. Finally, like the titles of his works that often refer directly to the individuals portrayed, (“Lauren”, “Nadja”, “Jan”, “Elvis”) the choice of one name suggests that the entire show is approached as a single portrait, perhaps of the artist himself.
Helena Papadopoulos

Norbert Witzgall

1976 born in Münchberg, Germany

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Education

2003 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna
2001 UdK, Berlin
1998 Ecole des Beaux Arts, Lyon
1996 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Nürnberg

Solo Exhibitions

2010
"alles erwin", SOUTERRAIN, Berlin, with Alex Müller
2009
"Double Fantasy", Samsa, Berlin, with Nina Hoffmann
"Francine(Leal Souvenir)", TÄT, Berlin, February
2008
"Wir", Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, New York, March - April
2007
"Cameron", Nice & Fit, Berlin, May - June
2006
"Dialog zu zweit", Autocenter, Berlin, with Uli Emmert
2004
"März", Projektraum Schleifmühlgasse, Vienna

Group Exhibitions

2010
"Dysfashional", Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
"Ins Blickfeld gerückt" curated by Franzisca Würz, Institut Français, Berlin
"Aka Symbol" curated by Mariechen Danz, Forgotten Bar, hbc, Berlin
"Six Days of New Media", Berlin
2009
"Hüttendong", After the Butcher, Berlin
"Neues Museum", Basso, Berlin
"Le Eck Lypsehöhle - an oracle", Skulpturenpark, Berlin
"Nördlich der Alpen:Hunger/Südlich der Alpen:Durst", Galerie Antik, Berlin
2008
"Der Autorität", Kunstverein Arnsberg
"März, Vorstadtsiedlung, Musik", Praxis Koloniestr. Wedding, Berlin
Autocenter, Berlin
2007
"Imperial", curated by Elmar Vestner, Souterrain, Berlin
"Nice & Fit Temporary at ReMap KM", Athens, organized by Chloe Vaitsou
"Believers and Illusionists" curated by Lars Morell at Rasmus Hansen, Berlin
2006
"Rio", Artnewsprojects, Berlin
"Lichtomis Dritter Standberg", after the butcher, Berlin
"Park Inn", Straßburger Str., Berlin
"Visible –Invisible", curated by Adina Popescu, Galerie Jan Wentrup, Berlin
"Die Sonne", Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin
2005
"Blencke Emmert Leykauf Neumeier Witzgall", Kunstverein Kohlenhof, Nuremberg
"Christliche Kunst der Neuzeit", Galerie Antik, Berlin

Bibliography

2010
taz – die tageszeitung, "magazine voller magazine", March 10
Martin Razhdashki, "Norbert Witzgall - Remembrance of things past", geil, p.76, spring issue
2009
Peeping Tom´s Digest, "Norbert Witzgall", p.194/195
2008
James Wagner, "Norbert Witzgall at Venetia Kapernekas", jameswagner.com, March 12
2007
Kito Nedo, "Puzzlehafte Erkundung des eigenen Ich", Berliner Zeitung, June 12, p.29
Artnet Spotlights, artnet.de, June 7
Sofia Tachias, "Neustart in Athen, Art Athina 2007", artnet.de, June 1
Art Highlights, The EXBERLINER, June, p.52
Chris Sharp, Space Invaders, Flash Art International, March-April, p.76
2006
"Die Olafur Banane", basso magazin #3, p.45
C. Herchenröder, "Störung der Sehgewohnheiten", Kunstmarkt, 25-26-27 August, p.1
MJ, "Das nicht Sichtbare zeigen", Die Tageszeitung, May 7, p.22

Norbert Witzgall

Norbert Witzgall
Brunnenstr. 163
10119 Berlin

n.e.w@gmx.de