Solo Exhibition
10.2. – 7.5.2023
Center for Contemporary Art, Project Space
Opening: Thursday 9.2.2023, 7 p.m.
Welcome: Frank Bewig, District City Councillor
Introduction: Ralf F. Hartmann, Head of the Cultural Office
For his first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin, Raphael Nagel devotes himself to his alter ego: a genderfluid figure equally present in digital and analog worlds. Decked out in a combination of blue, yellow, and red, the alter ego takes on various formal guises: As a sticker, an Instagram filter, or an icon for consumer products, it becomes an enduring mark in a constantly changing world. Starting from this art figure, Raphael Nagel produces a series of large-format self-portraits with gestural-excessive painting and examines the alter ego in its multidimensionality. The focus is less on painterly elaboration than on a deeply subjective self-analysis. Characteristic of this is the reduction to significant forms and a fast, sometimes radical style, sometimes radical style. The endlessly reproducible branding within virtual and analog consumer worlds thus stands in contrast to the individualistic medium of painting.
Raphael Nagel (* 1993) studied painting and grafic at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe from 2013 to 2019 and was a master student of Prof. Leni Hoffmann.
