Matthias Beckmann
Solo exhibition
1.2.2025 – 30.4.2025
ZAK – Centre for Contemporary Art, Project Space
Opening: Friday, 31 January 2025, 7 pm
Welcome: Dr Carola Brückner, District Councillor for Culture
Introduction: Dr Jens-Ole Rey, curator for visual arts
From autumn 2023 to spring 2024, the illustrator Matthias Beckmann was an almost daily guest at the Citadel in the exhibition ‘Unveiled. Berlin and Its Monuments’. At a time when people around the world are reflecting on how to deal with so-called ‘toxic’ monuments and calling for a more critical approach to them, Beckmann’s impulse was to engage with this topic artistically in his own unique way. Amidst the monuments from the 19th century to the present day, he produced drawings that show the collection in a new light. Far beyond all scientific systems of organisation, the artist focuses on other points of reference in order to approach both the content and the simple physical presence of the objects. His characteristic drawing style, which almost always consists of equally strong contour lines and a few watercolour accents, reveals unusual perspectives on individual figures and groups, highlighting the singular in a mass of similarities. Specific viewpoints make it possible to experience photographic vision and create combinations whose associative potential emphasises proportions, breaks, absurdities and the grotesque.
The underlying museum concept of a display warehouse is deciphered to the extent that the objects in the collection enter into relationships, evaluations can be recognised and sometimes absurd correlations arise. On the one hand, Beckmann’s analytical pictorial practice advances to a decidedly subjective view of the political history that manifests itself in the monuments.
With the kind support of the district development funds of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and of:
Fig.: Lights and Monuments, 2024, pencil and watercolour © VG Bild-Kunst 2024 | Grafic: Bernhard Rose
