Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
Home, Sweet Home

Victor Man (b. 1974) lives in Berlin. His painting emerges from depths of culture where the eye isn’t enough for catching the poetic field and the psychoanalytical profoundness through which our entire spiritual legacy advances and deposits. Painting is in his case “a perfected spiritual tool” (Bogdan Ghiu) which continuously returns to the original moment of visuality as a cognitive mode.

Selected exhibitions: Victor Man, Fürstenberg Zeitgenössisch, Donaueschingen (2017, solo); Con amore più che con amore, GAMeC, Bergamo (2017); Dissolve into a red dwarf, Island, Brussels (2017); Victor Man, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2016, solo); Victor Man, MD72 / Galerie Neu, Berlin (2016, solo); Open Ended: Painting and Sculpture Since 1900, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2016); These Strangers… Painting and People, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2016); Monstres and Madones, Triple V, Paris (2016); All the World’s Futures  The 56th International Art Exhibition – Venice Biennale (2015); Zephir, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014-2015, solo); Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2014, solo); Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin (2014, solo); In un altro aprile, Villa Medici, Rome (2013, solo); MUDAM (Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean), Luxembourg (2012, solo); Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2012); La Triennale: Intense Proximity, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Un’Espressione Geografica, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2011-2012); If Mind Were All There Was, Hayward Gallery, London (2009, solo); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2009, solo); On Relative Loneliness, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo / Attebasile, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2008, solo). Whose (His)story, Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg (2008); Expenditure: Busan Bienniale, Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan (2008) and Low Budget Monuments, the Romanian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007).

Taking his inspiration from autobiography, art history and melancholic narratives, Victor Man is the author of powerful visionary paintings and installations. Problema XXX can be compared to an incomplete sentence, a language gap or a blocked memory. This triptych appears as an attempt to convey some metaphysical, enigmatic message, as a problem with infinite possible interpretations. The overlapping of references from ancient mythology to personal and collective memory create different lines of interpretation, none of which true or false, just failed attempts to grasp intellectually the substance of the „pure painting”. When writing about painting and alchemy, the visual studies theorist James Elkins comments: „Paint is water and stone, and it is also liquid thought. That is an essential fact that art history misses, and alchemical ideas can demonstrate how it can happen.”

Images:

1. Victor Man, Problema XXX (2012), oil and canvas on wood, pencil on paper, 40 x 35 cm; 27 x 18 cm; 46 x 37 cm