Birgit Megerle

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Birgit Megerle (* 1975 in Geisingen ) is a German artist who works with painting , drawing , collage and performance .

Life

Birgit Megerle studied from 1997 to 2002 at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts . Between 1996 and 2000 she was a member of the Isotrop Academy in Hamburg, a group of around 20 young visual artists who, in addition to an art college, developed a self-organized training program with various activities and published the Isotrop magazine. From 2011 she held a visiting professorship for figurative painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna for one and a half years . She then taught at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts for a year. The artist lives and works in Berlin today.

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At the center of Birgit Megerle's art are collages, portraits and still lifes. Her (feminist) portraits - the portrayed are mostly friends of the artist - are mostly based on staged photos. The pictures painted in this way are characterized by a strictly self-confident, almost androgynous facial expression, by a mostly muted color palette, as well as by a background that is sometimes abstractly painted, sometimes with architectural fragments. The stylish clothes of the protagonists, who mostly look out of the picture, are reminiscent of the aesthetics of the avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century, but at the same time the portraits appear mysteriously timeless - is the fashion of today after all? This decidedly indeterminate character also shapes Megerle's handling of narrative structures. The pictures always lead the viewer to read them as the starting point of a story, but ultimately no narrative thread can be discerned in the pictures. Calculated vagueness also determines the portrait-like aspect: Although the painted, mostly isolated-looking people are quite clearly recognizable and their name is often mentioned in the title, individual, even psychological, attributions run nowhere. Ambiguity also characterizes the composition of the pictures insofar as abstract and representational parts appear simultaneously on the stage of these paintings. The background is often of a more or less abstract nature, whereas in the performing mode, the portrayed people can be seen - but these, too, are repeatedly alienated with abstract patterns.

Megerle's still lifes flank the portraits, as it were, presenting attributes that correspond to the mysterious, stylish appearance of these people. The, if you will, postmodern form of (feminine) identity, which is somewhere between aesthetic style, denied subjectivity and yet self-confidently staged personality, is not only found in Megerle's paintings, but also shapes what happens in her installations and performances . A good example of this is her performance “Popcorn Sappho”, 2013, carried out together with Sonja Cvitkovic and Michaela Meise. The three artists read fragments by the Greek poet Sappho and played their own music to accompany them. A “Sappho dress” tailored by Cvitkovic first hung on the wall and was then put on by the protagonists. In this almost theatrical staging, sexual identities were tried out in public as well as new forms of working and communicating together.

In her latest group of works "Caught in the Folies-Bergère", 2013, Megerle refers to the famous painting "Bar in the Folies-Bergère" by Edouard Manet. Megerle concentrates on the face of the barmaid standing in the center of the painting and varies it abstractly in various 60 × 70 cm paintings. Individual parts from the painting such as items of clothing and champagne bottles were also painterly worked into fragments. Finally, the artist also collaged clippings from business pages of various newspapers on these canvases. Identity in the area of ​​tension between sexuality, hedonism and economy is up for grabs here.

Prices

Collections

Works by Birgit Megerle from 2003 and 2004 were donated to the Museum of Modern Art in New York by the Judith Rothschild Foundation in 2009 .

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

  • 1998: Marie Claire , Nomadenoase Gallery, Hamburg
  • 2004: Solution Detachment , Galerie Neu, Berlin
  • 2007: Birgit Megerle: Monochromes & Paper Sculptures , Daniel Reich Gallery, New York
  • 2009: Soft Skills , Galerie Neu, Berlin
  • 2010: Birgit Megerle , Kunsthalle Lingen
  • 2013: Galeria Dawid Radzisewski , Warsaw (with Marcin Zerzeka)
  • 2013: Caught in the Folies-Bergère , Galleria Fonti, Naples
  • 2014: Airs and Graces , Galeria Fonti, Naples
  • 2015: AS YOU LIKE IT , NOUSMOULES, Vienna
  • 2015: Suite , Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna
  • 2017: The Painted Veil , Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus
  • 2018: Soft Power , Galerie Neu, Berlin

Participation in exhibitions

  • 2005: Prague Biennale 2
  • 2009: modern modern , Chelsea Art Museum
  • 2010: Love of life and dance of death , Kunsthalle Krems
  • 2010: Bloodflames III , Alex Zachary, New York (curated by Nick Mauss)
  • 2011: A Different Person , Badischer Kunstverein , Karlsruhe
  • 2012: Very Abstract and Really Figurative , Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna
  • 2013: Chat Jet. Painting beyond its medium. Part I , Künstlerhaus Graz
  • 2015: Unorthodox , The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
  • 2016: I, you, he / she / it , Kunstverein Leipzig, Leipzig
  • 2016: UNRULY RELATIONS , Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus
  • 2016: Clique-Critiqued , Marquise Dance Hall, Istanbul
  • 2017: Facetunes , Bielefelder Kunstverein
  • 2018: Relevelations , Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome, Rome
  • 2018: The Vitalist Economy of Painting , Galerie Neu, Berlin

literature

  • Isabelle Graw: The better half, artists of the 20th and 21st centuries , DuMont Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-8321-5961-0

Exhibition catalogs

  • Painting forever , published by KunstWerke Berlin, Berlin 2013 (catalog for the exhibition of the same name by contemporary artists who work in Berlin)
  • Vitamin P2 , Phaidon, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7148-6160-9
  • Birgit Megerle , text: Vanessa Joan Müller , Sternberg Press, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-1-934105-55-9 (catalog for the solo exhibition in the Kunsthalle Lingen 2010)
  • Modern modern , Ed. Pati Herling, Chelsea Art Museum. New York, NY., Starship Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-0-9823977-0-1
  • Birgit Megerle: Monochromes & Paper Sculptures , with an essay by Isabelle Graw , Ed. Daniel Reich Gallery, New York 2007
  • deutschemalereizweitausenddrei , published by Frankfurter Kunstverein, Lukas & Sternberg, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-9726806-0-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Akademie Isotrop , Kunstaspekte
  2. ^ Academy Isotrop. Press release. In: kunstaspekte.art. 1999, accessed October 2, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Appointments in the summer semester 2011, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
  4. ↑ Lingen Art Prize 2010 for Birgit Megerle , University of Fine Arts Hamburg
  5. ^ Christian Rattemeyer (Ed.): The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection. Catalog Raisonné , The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-87070-765-0 , p. 194
  6. ↑ 2nd Prague Biennale 2005. In: artmap.com. Accessed August 28, 2019 .
  7. ↑ modern modern chelseaartmuseum.org. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  8. ↑ Love of life and dance of death , aspects of art
  9. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kw-berlin.de
personal data
SURNAME Megerle, Birgit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Geisingen