ARCO Madrid 2024
6 Mar 2024 - 10 Mar 2024
At ARCOmadrid 2024, KEWENIG presents ‘Souvenir de jeunesse’, featuring a selection of artists from different generations who represent a variety of artistic approaches in terms of concept and style.
On display are examples of an early series of works by the French artist Christian Boltanski (1944–2021), in which he depicts himself twice, with a laughing and a sad face, in accordance with well-known symbolic representations of comedy and tragedy. The fact that he also relates these paintings on paper, formally conceived in poster style, to himself and his memories through the labelling, gives these rarely shown works an autobiographical note. ‘Souvenir de jeunesse’ also became the title of other works by the great installation artist in later years.
Installation views by Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
With the circus theme, French painter Johanna Dumet (b. 1991) explores a subject that already holds its place in art history and which she also connects directly to her childhood and youth. Like other of her works, these large-format canvases are also linked to her own memories and stories. They show a round dance of magnificent dressage horses or even just circus tents from the outside, whose small openings barely allow a view of the inside, thus metaphorically addressing the remembered and the hidden.
Installation views by Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Marcelo Viquez (b. 1971) is represented with works that evoke memories of one’s own youth in numerous cultures around the world. In several colourful drawings, the Uruguayan artist depicts animals, and sometimes humans, who are named in the picture. What all the creatures have in common is the red and white striped jumper – familiar to many generations from the protagonist of the hidden picture book ‘Where’s Waldo?’. With his playful and ironic depictions, Viquez approaches this perhaps buried but unforgotten souvenir of youth.