Stefan Demary

Stefan Demary (2009)

Stefan Demary (born March 14, 1958 in Troisdorf ; † June 29, 2010 in Düsseldorf ) was a German conceptual artist .

career

Stefan Demary was the son of Trude Demary and Helmut Demary , a graphic artist and designer. His brother is Frank Demary, Imi Knoebel's assistant .

Demary studied from 1978 to 1985 at the State Art Academy in Düsseldorf with Tony Cragg and Fritz Schwegler . The artist, who lived in Düsseldorf most of the time, attracted attention with his subversive drawings, collages and numerous indoor and outdoor installations. In 1988 he received a teaching position at the Art Academy in Münster and from 2001 to 2004 he taught at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld. From 2007 to 2010 he was a professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel , where he led the basic class. Demary has been a member of the German Association of Artists since 2003 .

Stefan Demary died of cancer in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth. Most of his work is in the legacy archive of the Art Fund Foundation. The art historian Harald Uhr creates a catalog raisonné for this.

On the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the death of Stefan Demary, Galerie Wittenbrink Munich is showing a retrospective from June 11th to September 5th, 2015. From July 24 to August 16, 2015, works by 36 artists of the former Schwegler class, including Stefan Demary, can be seen in the Kasseler Kunstverein under the title “neue end”. Another Demary exhibition is being organized by the Kunstfonds Foundation and will be presented in the winter refectory of Brauweiler Abbey from September 2015.

plant

Demary's art was to manipulate found things and thus rededicate their purpose and meaning. The art-historically correct term objet trouvé for 'found object' deceives, according to its sound, the fact that these were meticulously searched objects, because the things Demary used were selected after long inspections of the offers of department stores or hardware stores. In this respect, his works reflect a consumer anthropology of everyday things. Some items, such as a series of small crosses, were also made. The stylistic device of the subsequent misappropriation has several varieties with Demary. He changed the found things by astonishingly small manipulations and thus he also changed the symbolic relationships in which the object exists. The object is not destroyed in the process. But the first application, intended during its manufacture, becomes absurd (like a chair with shortened legs), chaotic (a puzzle, the pieces of which are all colored gray), pointless (a chess game in which the pieces of both parties are black) or emotionally ambivalent (a decapitated toy giraffe). These manipulations are used to gain knowledge that can be gained solely by looking at it, so that its correctness does not have to be checked in practice.

Demary's conceptual works are therefore characterized by the fact that, although very ambivalent and profound, they attract at first glance. “Something has happened to things, a strange, cheerful cruelty that is bearable because it is things and that is shockingly amusing because things are proxy. Because the magic of things (...) lies in being representatives for living beings, actions and feelings. "

The recurring motifs include animals, dolls, cars, portraits, which can be found in various groups of works. On the one hand, there are large-scale installations such as a lamp room, a cemetery room, radio room, rooms with dolls (jointed dolls, sex dolls, Barbie dolls that were placed on a wall as if for a street prostitute), a room full of plush dogs that were combined with real dog poop, Rooms with model-like accidents involving toy cars or mountaineering figures.

The drawings, which consist of annotated project drawings, fairy tale drawings, painting by numbers and watercolors, can be named as a second group.

A third group is made up of portraits, which emerge as extended self-portraits during actions and were then sent by invitation cards.

Finally, a fourth group can be formed from the works, which function like individual sculptures: a toy truck that is stuck in a square piece of metal; two boxer figures competing against each other at different heights; a pair of shoes with specimens of different sizes; an African mask pinned to the wall with a drill; a dart thrower whose arm with an arrow has flown a bit and is now stuck on a wall; a replicated antique kouros set up in Düsseldorf , whose head is on the other side of the street.

The art historian Annelie Pohlen, the Demary, as well as z. B. Kasper König , who promoted him at an early age, called him the "most colorful artist from the already colorful Schwegler class". Little known to the general public, Demary was and is highly valued by those involved in the art world, which is why he still has a status as an artist-artist .

Solo exhibitions (selection)

(K) = catalog

• 1983 Wittenbrink Gallery, Regensburg (K)
• 1985 Gallery Schütz, Worms (K)
• 1986 Wittenbrink Gallery, Munich (K)

Funding booth Galerie Wittenbrink, Art Cologne, Cologne (K)

• 1988 Wittenbrink Gallery, Munich
• 1989 Gallery Schütz, Frankfurt am Main (K)

Ursula Ehrhardt Gallery, Nuremberg

• 1990 State Gallery Munich (K)
• 1991 Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (K)

Gallery Schütz, Frankfurt am Main

• 1992 Wittenbrink Gallery, Munich; Stadtwerke Troisdorf
• 1993 Galerie Schütz, Frankfurt am Main

Installation Akademie Schloss Solitude

• 1994 Kunstraum Neue Kunst, Hanover

Gallery Schütz, Frankfurt am Main

• 1995 New Aachen Art Association

Workplace gallery, Heidelberg

• 1997 Wittenbrink Gallery, Munich

Museums of the city of Lüdenscheid

Gallery Schütz, Frankfurt am Main

• 1998 outdoor sculpture Kouros, art in construction project,

Siemens Düsseldorf (K); M. Cosar Gallery, Düsseldorf

• 1999 1st league, Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern (K); (M.Cosar Gallery, Düsseldorf?)
• 2000 works on paper, Wittenbrink Gallery, Munich

Unit in the glass pavilion of the Volksbühne, Berlin; (Radke Gallery?)

• 2002 General Consumer Association, Braunschweig
• 2003 Museum Baden, Solingen

Kasseler Kunstverein in the Fridericianum, Kassel (with W. Spanier) (K)

Martin Leyer-Pritzkow exhibitions, Düsseldorf

• 2004 2 yk gallery, Berlin

Outdoor sculpture Venus, art in architecture project, University Hospital Bonn

Art Association Mönchengladbach e. V.

• 2005 Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e. V., Potsdam Luisenforum
• 2006 Claudia Simon Gallery, Düsseldorf
• 2008 Gallery Wittenbrink, Munich (K)
• 2015 An artist's life, Galerie Wittenbrink, Munich
• 2016 The universe was created as dripping , Stefan Demary and Thomas Ruch , Martin Leyer-Pritzkow exhibitions, Düsseldorf

Group exhibitions (selection)

(K) = catalog

• 1982 Hardenberg Castle Gallery, Velbert Kadruf `7, Kassel (K)
• 1984 Im Toten Winkel, Kunsthaus Hamburg (K)
• 1985 House Waende, Altes Museum Mönchengladbach (K)

Young German Art III Grotesque, Städt. Gallery Regensburg (K)

• 1986 Grotesque, Kunsthaus Nürnberg
• 1987 Animal Art, Steirischer Herbst, Graz (K)
• 1988 Here 88, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (K)
• 1989 view positions for the 90s ?, Stadtgalerie Kiel (K)

D + S, Kunstverein Hamburg

• 1991 Gallery Mai 36, Lucerne

Zeitrausch, Bonner Kunstverein (K)

Positions, Art Cologne special show, Cologne (K)

• 1992 homage to the banal, urban. Exhibition hall at Hawerkamp, ​​Münster (K)
• 1993 Around the dome, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart

Made in Hamburg, Kunsthaus Hamburg (K)

• 1994 Trains-Trains, Villa Merkel, Esslingen (K)
• 1995 Duchamp's great-grandson, Bonner Kunstverein (K)
• 1996 Machines, Schlüter Gallery, Hamburg
• 1998 Scholarship Exhibition, Ringenberg Castle

Goethe Institute, Ankara, Turkey (K)

• 1999 Oh Hitchcock, Kunsthalle Tirol, Hall, Austria
• 2000 Schlick Gallery, Düsseldorf

Michael Cosar Gallery, Düsseldorf

On site, German Association of Artists, Künstlerhof Berlin-Buch (K)

• 2001 Big Nothing, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (K)

And nobody limps, 22 ways to get away from Schwegler, Museum Kurhaus Kleve (K)

Bon Direct, Bonner Kunstverein (K)

And no one limps, 22 ways to get away from Schwegler, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

Piano III, Carla Stützer Gallery, Cologne

My Choice, Galerie J. Friedrich, Dortmund

Michael Cosar Gallery, Düsseldorf

Stella-Starlights, Edition Stella A., Berlin

• 2002 City of Art, Bonn
• 2003 Herbarium of Views, Art and Exhibition Hall of the FRG , Bonn (K)

Friendly Fire, Shedhalle Frauenfeld, Switzerland

Scholarship holder exhibition, Balmoral Castle, Bad Ems (K)

• 2004 Friendly Fire, Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern (K)

running Mars, Pan Kunstforum Niederrhein, Emmerich (K)

Friendly Fire, The Gus Fisher Gallery; Auckland, New Zealand

The unwritten post-war history of drawing, Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt

• 2005 Tapko, Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, Denmark (K)

Stable lateral position - from the complexity of fine arts, (K)

Museum Bochum, Gallery of Artists Munich,

University of Fine Arts Dresden + Kunsthaus Dresden,

New Museum Weserburg Bremen

• 2006 Faites vos jeux! Art and play since Dada, (K)

Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen,

Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, Holland

Awards, prizes, grants

• 1981–1982 scholarship Cité Internationale des Arts Paris
• 1989–1990 Barkenhoff scholarship, Worpswede
• 1991 work grant, Hamburg
• 1992 Scholarship at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart
• 1993 working grant from the Art Fund Foundation , Bonn
• 1995 Art and Culture Foundation, North Rhine-Westphalia
• 1997–1998 Scholarship at Schloss Ringenberg
• 2002 Art Prize from the Stadtsparkasse Solingen, Museum Baden
• 2003 Scholarship at the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems
• 2006 Schöppingen Foundation Scholarship
• 2007 Triennial Small Sculpture Prize, Fellbach

bibliography

• Heike Endter: Demary. An artist's life, Neofelis, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-95808-310-3 .
• Annelie Pohlen, Stephan Berg (ed.): Fund for a good view; Art Fund 1980–2010. Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86984-250-9 .
• Heike Endter: Stefan Demary . Galerie Wittenbrink, Munich, 2008.
• Karl Heinz Rummeny (Ed.): Parking garage in Malkastenpark 1997-2011 . Druckverlag Kettler, Bönen, 2012.
• Friendly fire . Catalog for the group exhibition in the Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Kerber, Bielefeld, 2004. ( Britta E. Buhlmann , We against ourselves? / Us Against Ourselves?, Leonhard Emmerling, Friendly Fire )
• St. Demary , Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems, 2004.
• Bernhard Balkenhol: Stefan Demary / Wolfgang Spanier. 2 from ... DÜSSELDORF . Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, 2003, ISBN 3-927941-33-6 .
• Merger . Galerie Huber Goueffon / Galerie Wittenbrink, Munich, 2001. (Carolin Probst, Michael Wagner: Stefan Demary: survey )
• Receipt direct. Stefan Demary, Yvon Favrot, Michaela Sadlowski, Ute Sroka, 2001.
• Stefan Demary, Kouros. Siemens AG, Munich, 1998. ( The Kouros for Düsseldorf. A conversation with Stefan Demary, Kasper König and Matthias Winzen. )
• Duchamp's great-grandson . Exhibition catalog Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, 1995. (Johannes Stahl, "Stefan Demary - very private. A homestory"; Annelie Pohlen, "From thinking with toys to feeling with disorders - Stefan Demary's angular straightforwardness in creative expertise")
• Petra Römer-Westarp: Stefan Demary . Exhibition catalog, Stadtwerke Troisdorf, Troisdorf, 1992.
• Ulrich Bischoff : Stefan Demary. State Gallery of Modern Art, Bavarian State Painting Collection, Munich, Munich, 1990.
• Stefan Demary. State Art Gallery, Baden-Baden, 1988.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Herbarium of Views. New entries in the German Association of Artists ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. (accessed on July 25, 2015) 
2. ↑ Heike Endter: Stefan Demary . Gallery Wittenbrink, Munich 2008.

Web links

• Literature by and about Stefan Demary in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Stefan Demary with Martin Leyer-Pritzkow
• Stefan Demary on galeriewittenbrink.de
• Stefan Demary on kunstnetznrw.de