Rafael Jablonka

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Rafael Jablonka (2018)
Rafael Jablonka (left) with Franz Gertsch in the Böhm Chapel

Rafael Jablonka (* 1952 in Koło , Poland ) is a German art dealer , gallery owner and curator. The Jablonka Gallery, which he runs, has been one of the most well-known and internationally operating galleries in Germany and Europe since it was founded.

Career

Rafael Jablonka studied civil engineering in Cracow and after moving to Germany initially worked as an engineer in Munich . There he met Dany Keller, for whose gallery he organized an exhibition with Polish avant-garde artists. In 1978 Jablonka organized an international exhibition that fit in a suitcase entitled "Fourth Dimension in a Rectangle", u. a. with Daniel Buren , Ilya Kabakov and Reiner Ruthenbeck , with whom he made stops in several places in Poland and Germany.

In 1979 he founded a conceptual gallery which he called "Vacuum". The name “vacuum” was associated with the intention not to admit any visitors, the gallery owner was the only one who was involved in the creation of the work together with the artist: a sender and a receiver. For example, Tony Cragg's contribution consisted of listing all the objects in Teresa and Rafael Jablonka's apartment according to size, color and material without further naming the object. In a vacuum, Jablonka worked together a. a. with Tony Cragg, Andrzej Dłużniewski , Braco Dimitrijević , Ian McKeever, Reinhard Mucha , Reiner Ruthenbeck .

1980 - 1985 he studied art history (with Max Imdahl ) at the Ruhr University in Bochum .

In November 1982 he initiated and organized an auction and exhibition at the Düsseldorf Art Palace "Against Martial Law in Poland - for Solidarność " with works by 60 artists, including works by Georg Baselitz , Joseph Beuys , Tony Cragg , Isa Genzken , Hans Haacke and Imi Knoebel , Reinhard Mucha , Albert Oehlen , Nam June Paik , Gerhard Richter , Thomas Schütte , Günther Uecker , whose works were auctioned in favor of Solidarność on November 13, 1982. The auction was carried out under the advice of Henrik Rolf Hanstein and Stephan von Wiese with Karl Ruhrberg as auctioneer.

As assistant to Kasper König , he was responsible for the exhibition " From Here - Two Months of New German Art in Düsseldorf " in 1984 and in 1986 he worked as a guest curator in the exhibition "Europe / America - The History of an Artistic Fascination Since 1940", designed by Siegfried Gohr. a topic that should become programmatic for his gallery work in the 1990s. In 1987 he went to Berlin for a year to work as director of Reinhard Onnasch's gallery.

In July 2019, he handed over his collection of over 400 works of American and German art from the 1980s to the Albertina in Vienna as the “Rafael and Teresa Jablonka Foundation” .

Jablonka gallery

In 1988, Rafael Jablonka founded his own gallery in Cologne, in the house at Venloer Straße 21 commissioned by Max Hetzler and designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers .

From the beginning of the 1990s, Richard Prince , Meyer Vaisman, Carroll Dunham , Peter Halley , Mike Kelley , Nobuyoshi Araki , Roni Horn , Damien Hirst , Gilbert & George , Andreas Slominski and Sherrie Levine became key figures in the gallery . In 1989 Jablonka was the first gallery owner in Germany to present the American artist Mike Kelley in two solo exhibitions, whom he also showed regularly in the following years.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Jablonka Galerie has developed an unmistakable profile with two programmatic focuses: on the one hand, establishing a young American generation in Europe, on the other hand, working with European artists such as a. Francesco Clemente , Katharina Fritsch , Reiner Ruthenbeck and Andreas Slominski . In 1993 Jablonka invited Damien Hirst to a solo exhibition. The exhibition was entitled: The Acquired Inability to Escape, Inverted and Divided and other works. In 1994 the English artist couple Gilbert & George exhibited their new, provocative Naked Shit Pictures at Jablonka. In 1994 and 1996 the Nobuyoshi Araki gallery showed. His erotic and taboo-breaking photographs, celebrated in Japan but also censored, also shocked the German audience. In 1996 the gallery moved into new rooms at Lindenstrasse 19, which it opened with an exhibition by Sherrie Levine "Cathedrals & Hobbyhorses".

In 1997, Rafael Jablonka showed Andy Warhol's "Egg Paintings", with which he initiated a series of exhibitions of Warhol works: "Knives Paintings" and "Cross Paintings", an exhibition he designed in 1999 for the Diocesan Museum in Cologne. In the new decade of 2000, exhibitions by artists such as Alex Katz , Eric Fischl , Miquel Barceló , Andreas Slominski , David Salle and Philip Taaffe followed .

In September 2006 the gallery opened a branch on Kochstrasse in Berlin with Terry Winters. As a continuation of the "Kandor-Con 2000" installation, Mike Kelley developed a group of works between 2000 and 2007 that he called "Kandors". She consisted u. a. made of multi-part sculptures, the main components of which were large, colorful glass bells. The production of the glass bells took several years and was produced by Jablonka in Bohemia. Jablonka showed these sculptures, light boxes and videos in Berlin under the title "Kandors". In 2010 the Berlin branch was closed. From mid-2010 Jablonka devoted his time mainly to the Böhm Chapel.

Jablonka Galerie regularly took part in international art fairs such as Art Basel , Art Cologne , Frieze Art Fair , London, Art Basel Miami Beach , Art Paris Abu Dhabi and TEFAF , Maastricht.

On April 30, 2018, Rafael Jablonka ended his gallery work after 30 years and handed over his extensive gallery archive to the Central Archive for German and International Art Market Research (ZADIK) in Cologne. The range of materials in the archive includes a variety of unique documents, such as photos of exhibition installations and exhibition structures, artist and business correspondence as well as the graphically concise invitations, catalogs and press reviews of Jablonka's gallery work. With the transfer of the gallery archive to ZADIK, the gallery has become part of recent art history. The exhibition activities continue today in the Böhm Chapel.

Boehm Chapel

Boehm Chapel

In 2010, Rafael and Teresa Jablonka in Hürth, near Cologne, acquired the profane parish church of St. Ursula, built by Gottfried Böhm in 1954–56, which they had converted into a place for contemporary art and renamed "Böhm Chapel".

During the opening of the Böhm Chapel in autumn 2010 with an exhibition by Terry Winters , the six-part glockenspiel commissioned in the Jablonka campanile was inaugurated with a piece from the “Metamorphoses” by the American composer Philip Glas . In May 2016, the sculpture “Two By Two” (2010) by Richard Deacon was placed in the garden that was redesigned by Piet Blanckaert . Since 2010 two exhibitions per year with artists like u. a. Richard Deacon, Eric Fischl , Franz Gertsch , David LaChapelle , Sherrie Levine , Matt Mullican , Ulrich Rückriem , Philip Taaffe , William Tucker and Terry Winters. From 2012 concerts will take place in the Böhm Chapel in regular succession. a. by Sufi & Sera Ensemble (2012), Kudsi Erguner and Michael Wollny (2012), Wolfgang Sauer and Michael Wollny (2013) and Philip Glass (2016).

Thomas Schütte "Ferienhaus T"

In 2010, Rafael Jablonka acquired a 3000 square meter plot of land on the edge of the forest in the Tyrolean town of Mösern in order to create a house for artists and an exhibition space. During the retrospective of Thomas Schuette's exhibition “Big Buildings. Models and Views ”in the Federal Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn In 2010, Jablonka had the idea to ask Thomas Schütte whether he would realize his work Ferienhaus für Terroristen as a building. Since 2002 Thomas Schütte has designed a group of models, the so-called holiday homes for terrorists on a scale of 1:20, especially from 2009 as a reaction to the events of 9/11 and as a kind of socio-political model. On behalf of Rafael Jablonka, Thomas Schütte developed the 1: 1 version of the model together with the architect Lars Klatte (architects RKW) and Armin Kathan (architects Holzbox), which was completed as a building on March 30, 2012.

The 100 square meter holiday home T. is architecture, sculpture and installation or an “objet d'architecture” at the same time. The walk-in sculpture does not primarily serve as a living space, but should be used as a retreat and thinking space to linger and reflect. For Rafael Jablonka "it is a house for the soul". The house is not open to the public, but can be visited on request.

Artists of the gallery (selection)

Nobuyoshi Araki , Miquel Barceló , Ross Bleckner , Francesco Clemente , Eric Fischl , Alex Katz , Mike Kelley , David LaChapelle , Sherrie Levine , Richard Prince , Andreas Slominski , Philip Taaffe , Andy Warhol , Terry Winters

Literature (selection)

  • Rafael Jablonka: Ruins: Strategies of Destruction in the Fracture Paintings of Georg Baselitz 1966-1969 . Anthony d'Offay Gallery (Ed.), London 1982.
  • Kasper König (Ed.): From here. 2 months new German art in Düsseldorf ., Rafael Jablonka u. Maja Oeri (collaborator), DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1984, ISBN 978-3770116508 .
  • Siegfried Gohr, Rafael Jablonka: Europe / America - The story of an artistic fascination since 1940 . Museum Ludwig, Cologne 1986.
  • Rafael Jablonka: Let me be your doorman! . In: First Step. National Museum Krakow 2008.
  • Conversation / interview with Rafael Jablonka / Frank Berberich: Traders and seducers. Trained eyes, a good nose, strong nerves and the time as a judge . In: Lettre International, Volume 89/2010.
  • Mike Kelley: Kandors . Rafael Jablonka (Ed.), Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3777431413 .
  • Thomas Schütte: Ferienhaus T. (With a text by Julian Heynen). Rafael and Teresa Jablonka (eds.), Grammlich 2014, ISBN = 978-3-931354-53-4.
  • Sherrie Levine: After All . Neues Museum, State Museum for Art and Design Nuremberg (Ed.), Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN = 978-3-7774-2802-4.
  • Brigitte Jacobs van Renswou: Jablonka Gallery - about the founding of the gallery, the transatlantic dialogue and significant individual presentations in the nineties . In: sediment - communications on the history of the art trade. Central Archive for German and International Art Market Research eV ZADIK (Ed.), Volume 28/29, Cologne 2018, pp. 82-104, ISBN = 978-3-903228-83-2.

Web links

A complete chronology of all exhibitions at the Jablonka Gallery can be found at: Boehm Chapel and Archive Jablonka Gallery .

A list of the publications edited by Rafael Jablonka can be found at: Archive Jablonka Gallery / Publications .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Conversion to installments , wienerzeitung.at (accessed on February 20, 2020)
  2. ^ Friedemann Malsch: News from the Cologne gallery scene . In: Kunstforum International . B. 95, 1988, pp. 325-326 .
  3. ↑ a b Brigitte Jacobs van Renswou: Jablonka Gallery - on the founding of the gallery, the transatlantic dialogue and significant individual presentations in the nineties . In: Central archive for German and international art market research ZADIK (Ed.): Sediment - Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Kunsthandels . No. 28/29 . Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-903228-83-2 , p. 82-104 .
  4. ↑ Brigitte Jacobs van Renswou: From the ZADIK. Mike Kelley and Damien Hirst had their first exhibitions with him . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 13, 2018.
  5. ↑ Catrin Lorch: Second Galleries. From Cologne to Berlin: Rafael Jablonka and Julius Werner . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 8, 2006.
  6. ^ Hans-Jürgen Hafner: Mike Kelley: Kandors. Autumn superheroism . In: Kunstforum International . tape 189 , 2008, p. 287 .
  7. ^ Lisa Zeitz: Ade Berlin . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 11, 2010.
  8. ↑ Central archive for German and international art market research ZADIK [1]
  9. ↑ Boehm Chapel
  10. ↑ Julian Heynen: Doing nothing as a possibility for what? In: Rafael and Teresa Jablonka (eds.): Thomas Schütte: Ferienhaus T. Grammlich 2014, ISBN 978-3-931354-53-4 , p. 39-47 .
personal data
SURNAME Jablonka, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer, gallery owner and curator
DATE OF BIRTH 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Koło