Earthly Bodies (Online only)

Galerie von Vertes is proud to present the exhibition “Earthly bodies” that explores the interplay of the Body and Landscape in 20th and 21st century paintings, works on paper and sculptures.

Earthly Bodies is based on the idea that pictorial metaphors can function as doorways that allow the viewer to visually enter a work of art in a multidimensional way. In front of the work of art, the viewer is being presented with two choices: Taking the red pill and enjoy the painting as such or taking the blue pill which means going down the rabbit hole, actively engaging in its content. The second option eventually provides a breeding ground for thoughts and ideas by activating the readers perception and imagination. A pictorial metaphor unites thoughts and actions to trigger a potential change of conceptions by infusing them with new meanings. Functioning as instruments of human orientation, but also instruments of creative transformation, pictorial metaphors are active at the intersection of art, semantics, poetry, and psychology. Ultimately generating an expanded mental universe through detachment.

The pictorial representation of bodies, landscapes and ultimately the merging of these two into the metamorphic body-landscape is divided in 3 parts: the Body, the Landscape and the Body-Landscape. Artists like Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Willem de Kooning, Alexej von Jawlensky, Nicolas de Stael but also Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and Gerhard Richter have all explored the body landscape dichotomy in their own right.