The grads went gallery hopping after the morning visit at the @centrepompidou. They visited @galeriemaxhetzler gallery to see @katherinagross. After they visited the @galerieobadia and saw the work of @jorisvandemoortel
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#artsatalfred #alfreduniversity @arts_at_alfred @alfreduniversity #paris #gallery #mfa #painting #graduateschool

The second day the grads went to the Centre Pompidou. This was a great museum to start the trip with.
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@arts_at_alfred #artsatalfred #alfreduniversity @alfreduniversity #mfa #paris @centrepompidou #centrepompidou #painting

Last week the Alfred-Dusseldorf Painting grads had a four day excursion to Paris. On day one the grads visited a few cathedrals: The Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, and The Basilica of Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre!

#artsatalfred @arts_at_alfred #alfredpainting #paris #painting #alfreduniversity @alfreduniversity #mfa

What are the second year painting grads up to in their studios in Dusseldorf?
They are getting some work done before the big Paris trip next week! They have some great paintings in the works.

Pictured are Angela Lee, Mim Weinkauf, JJ Baker and works from Archer Rivers and Amanei Johnson.

Insel Hombroich is a truly unique experience. It is a sprawling art collection that takes visitors from gallery spaces designed by Erwin Heerch through winding paths in nature. The collection spans from metal sculptures by local German artists to East Asian statues to drawings, paintings, and prints by the likes of Rembrandt, Giacometti, and Cezanne, The grads stopped by this museum after visiting the Langen Foundation.

This past weekend the graduates students visited the Lagen Foundation. The grads saw Conny Mair’s exhibition Beautiful disasters, and were heavily inspired by her.

Zihao Chen and S. Alexandra Simental complete their MFA thesis exhibition CENSOR/SENSOR in Düsseldorf, Germany.

In their artworks, S. Alexandra Simental and Zihao Chen combine their personal experiences and memories to confront an individual’s crises in the digital information age and the censorship system. Hailing from the United States and China, the two artists employ painting to deconstruct their understanding of sensory and censorship, despite their distinct backgrounds. Their series of works, which utilize natural distortive phenomena, atmosphere, symbols, and pulp materials, aims to provide the audience with an immersive experience that questions the state of the contemporary world.

CENSOR/SENSOR stems from the artistic practices of two exhibiting artists whose works strongly reflect the concepts of sensory and censorship. Despite being seemingly opposing in meaning, these two terms are intrinsically related. Sensory pertains to the specialized organs and sensory nerves that perceive external stimuli. It operates based on the law of all or nothing, serving as the channel for individuals to gather external information. Conversely, censorship suppresses the senses artificially, intending to unify and regulate people’s perceptual abilities. Through censorship, individuals’ perception of the environment, society, and political structures are permanently altered. While sensory feedback is the foundation of humans’ physical and emotional responses, censorship mechanisms regulate the formation of their senses, resulting in the deprivation of the right to perceive freely.

Personal memory, cultural background, political anxiety, and contradiction are inseparable dialogues in Zihao Chen’s painting practice in this new body of work. Chen uses paper pulp as his primary formula, offering excellent flexibility in its physical form and the combination of pigments. At a conceptual level, paper pulp is closely related to information, knowledge, and art history. By transforming books, newspapers, magazines, and personal sketches into pulp through a blender, he creates abstract forms that carry a deeper meaning beyond materiality. This links to his recent criticisms of censorship and politics, as paper and pulp have long been associated with the dissemination and control of information. To further explore the impact of information and education on individual thought, he introduces elements such as book covers and chalkboards related to his memory. When displayed in a physical space, these paintings create a viewing experience that is both contradictory and dystopian. The fragility, roughness, and even grotesqueness of paper pulp, combined with the imagery of exploding books and ambiguous chalkboards, aim to evoke a sense of unease and disorientation.

A long exhale, a prolonged glance that shifts out of focus, thoughts of then, now, if, and when. How is it exactly that we perceive? In S. Alexandra Simental’s paintings, she questions how the mind works: how one can experience the space they occupy while simultaneously visualizing a memory or idea. How do the past, present, and future intersect? Is the way we process information today overloaded, and do we need to be distracted? Since the rise of digital technology, humans have been bombarded by information. What was once a passing glance at a newsstand or short phone call to a friend has now become an endless log of scrolling. Humans have less control of what they consume, and many are addicted to this retrieval of stimulated words and imagery. Unpacking how this modern way of living is affecting our psyche and reorienting the overlooked qualities of daily life is fundamental to Simental’s process. Painting allows her to distill imagery and slowly process the sensations of memory and feeling. The paint is lightly stippled or smooth like liquid, barely existing on the surface, in the same way that memories and thoughts bleed in and out. Up close, the subtle shifts in color and texture can appear without distinction, and perhaps causes the viewer to yearn for more, just like refreshing a page, asking for more stimulation. She looks for the objects that connect us even when we are alone, as how we navigate mental health today is imperative to our future.

Grads took a day trip to Cologne where they visited Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks which can be viewed from anywhere in the city, It is one of the most beautiful examples of Gothic and Neo-Gothic architecture in the world and it took over 600 years to complete. Painter Gerhard Richter completed a permanent replacement for 19th-century glass that was destroyed in World War II in 2007. Richter’s window consists of more than 11,000 square panes in 72 solid colors, arrayed seemingly at random within the many-mullioned window.

Students first visited Museum Ludwig, one of Eu­rope’s most ex­ten­sive col­lec­tions of Pop Art, the third-largest Pi­cas­so col­lec­tion in the world, one of the most im­por­tant col­lec­tions of Ger­man Ex­pres­sion­ism, out­s­tand­ing works from the Rus­sian avant-garde, and an ex­cel­lent col­lec­tion on the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy. It is home to one of the most im­por­tant col­lec­tions of 20th and 21st art in the world.

On display was Ur­su­la—That’s Me. So What?, which was the first com­pre­hen­sive mu­se­um show on the artist in over thir­ty years. con­taining 236 works. Ur­su­la’s life and work of­fered an un­con­ven­tio­n­al nar­ra­tive of artis­tic in­de­pen­dence. Her art ex­em­pli­fied the idea that Sur­re­al­ism is not a style, but an at­ti­tude. Ur­su­la sub­vert­ed re­al­i­ty and found the un­can­ny in the ev­ery­day, chal­leng­ing the au­thor­i­ties of so­ci­e­ty and art by imagin­ing new worlds in which old hi­erarchies are thrown over­board and new ways of life are con­ceiv­able.

Later students visited, Kolumba, an art museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne, originally founded in 1853. Inside grads experienced two millennia of western culture in a single building. Comprising art from late antiquity to the very present, the whole ensemble is filled with a sense of history, visibly intensified through its distinctive architecture. The modern building is a harmonious combination designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to merge both the Gothic ruins of St. Kolumba and Böhms chapel “Madonna in the Ruins” with the unique archaeological excavation site.

Grads attended Art Fair Düsseldorf located at the Areal Böhler, a former steel factory that amplified the atmosphere with daylight and the architectural remains of the old steelworks. Since 2017, the fair has aimed to be a leading platform for talents and a diversity of perspectives of backgrounds; whether young or established, artists or gallerists, collectors or curators, the fair offers a stage for progressive positions, relevant ideas, and engaging concepts.  Its mission is to bring contemporary global art to life with a particular focus on the art-historical relevance of the city, with which the fair is very closely linked.

A final museum visit in the morning.

Students returned to the Neue Nationalgalerie to see the opening of Gerhard Richter’s 100 Works for Berlin. The main work in the exhibition was the series Birkenau (2014), which consisted of four large-format, abstract paintings. Birkenau is the result of Richter’s long and in-depth engagement with the Holocaust and the possibilities of representing it. Alongside the Birkenau series, other works from various phases of Richter’s career were exhibited, including Squatters’ House (1989), 4,900 Colors (2007), and Strip (2013/2016). There were also another large group of works from Richter’s series of overpainted photographs, in which he addresses the tension between photography and painting on a new level.

Also new on display was Tehching Hsieh’s work, One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece). Born in 1950 in Nanzhou, Pingtung, Taiwan, Hsieh became known internationally in the late 1970s and early 1980s primarily for his durational performances, each of which ran over a year. The film and photo installation shows the performance, in which the artist photographed himself punching in on a time clock every hour for a year. The sleep deprivation thus provoked a kind of delirium, causing a number of photographs to fail.