SAATCHI GALLERY. GESAMTKUNSTWERK NEW ART FROM GERMANY. 18/11/11 – 30/04/12

Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York`s HQ, Kings Road, Chelsea London SW3 4SQ,

opens Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art from Germany 18 November 2011.

AVANTGARDE

GESAMTKUNSTWERK: New Art from Germany Showcasing 24 artists , most of whom have been little seen in the UK.

Their work including sculpture,painting,drawing & installation, ranges from the grotesque & macabre to the lyrical & surreal, reflecting the

diversity of German art now.

WAGNER.

Perhaps best known for its Wagnerian associations, the word “Gesamtkunstwerk” can be translated as a total, ideal or universal work of art, or as a synthesis of different art forms into one all-embracing unique genre.

As such, many works in this exhibition reflect on the boundaries of art,in terms of perception of it & its relationship to other disciplines. If their work points to a new kind of Gesamtkunstwerk it is one in which high & low culture, the avantgarde & the historicalthe everyday & everything in between can co-exist.

POST WAR GERMANY

Running through the exhibition is an inherent reference to another quasi-Gesamtkunstwerk, the baggage of post-war German visual culture & the work of earlier generations of German artists, from the Expressionists to Joseph Beuys,Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Rosemarie Trockel, Gerhard Richter, & Franz West, with whom many of the artists in this exhibition seem to be in conversation.

Courtesy Saatchi Gallery.