BIRGIT MEGERLE – SOFT POWER
2018-02-19In the context of social debates, ‘soft power’ is usually brought up as an alternative to the hard means of political power. In contrast to the police and military forces, diplomacy is a soft power. But consumption and culture, museums or language schools are institutions of soft power, too. In fact, artists are ‘warriors of soft power’ – an idea that evokes ambivalent feelings.
Every period has its names. Three of the works presented in the exhibition trace back to covers of the magazine Emma, each of which, as it were, indicates the state of the ‘Federal German feminism’ of its time. “C.B.” is based on the earliest cover of 1985, featuring Claire Bretécher, a French satirical cartoonist. The latest cover was published in 2015 and shows a lesbian couple: “Elles”. Somewhere in between lies “Kid Woolf”: Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf in “The Hours”. Together these works span a period of four decades. The signet, which is the female gender symbol, the name of the magazine, and the headlines have all been manipulated; they are either covered by monochrome colour fields or vanished completely. The Emma archive serves as the source of this series; through the digital availability of all issues from 1977 to today, the cover images are linked with the innumerable images of actresses and actors, dating sites, and film stills circulating on the internet, which provide the basis for the personages and subjects of many of the paintings in this exhibition: While in many of her earlier works, Birgit Megerle either portrayed people from her own environment or staged the motifs by herself, the moment of production is now strongly focused on the process of painting itself.
Opposite – RGB Affirmations (Yellow), 2018
Exhibition runs through to March 1st, 2018
Galerie Neu
Linienstraße 119 abc
10115 Berlin
Germany
