28.03. – 22.04.06
Douglas Kolk / Erik van Lieshout
Veronica Brovall
“Knochenbruch”
Solo presentations at Arndt & Partner, Berlin

PRESS RELEASE
Exhibition space I
The protagonists in the drawings and collages of Douglas Kolk, who was born in Newark (USA) in 1963, find themselves thrown into a chaotic space of images that teems with signs of our fashiondominated and media-stricken culture. Amidst consumer goods floating freely about, there are weak contour lines outlining faces and fragments of bodies - and these sketched figures combine into ephemeral beings staring into the void like fashionista zombies.
They are surrounded by hovering ghosts, skulls, and monstrous grimaces - detached from the context of fashion statements - that sometimes even become part of them. Reference to the attributes of youth culture is also made by hoodie shirts, high heels, and sneakers. There is a certain fragility and subtle beauty in these figures - like a picture puzzle, they sway between inner pressure and outward frailty, between deformation and fragility. They are not able to cope with this conflict - just the opposite: they are destroyed by this conflict while they either exude indifference on the outside or articulate their rage, yearning, and fears only in fragments.
This is how the dazzling multitude of visual codes in our world of consumption turns into the backdrop of an inescapable psychic inferno that will never come to an end. Here, there is a linkage to the artist himself, who ceased his artistic work in 1999 as a result of excessive drug consumption and started to work again only in 2004. Today Douglas Kolk and his family live in Boston. His works are featured in collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Falckenberg collection in Hamburg. Upcoming exhibitions: Mary Boone Gallery, New York, Kunsthalle Mannheim and Arndt & Partner (in late August 2006).
Exhibition space II
The Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout became known for his sophisticated video installations and large-scale drawings examining the so-called marginal figures of society and putting to test their stereotypes. He staged caricaturesque situations that he presented to the cultivated viewer in order to provide a grotesque confirmation of the viewer's prejudice. This was not only a balancing act between tabooed issues such as racism, drug addiction, and criminality - with rough charcoal strokes, we were rather introduced by the artist into a naive or even ugly world of images that took up the tradition of Martin Kippenberger's or Raymond Pettibon's satirical approaches to art.
In his new series of drawings presented at Arndt & Partner there is a thematic shift. Together with the video work van Lieshout is showing at the 4th berlin biennial for contemporary art they form of a body of work dealing with a bicycle trip the artist has made through Brandenburg.
Since the mid-1990s, Erik van Lieshout who lives and works in Rotterdam, where he was born in 1968, has taken part in numerous important exhibition projects, such as the 2003 Venice Biennial 2003 (Dutch Pavilion). The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam will present a solo show of van Lieshout from December 2, 2006 until February 4, 2007.

Showroom
Veronica Brovall: "Knochenbruch" (Fracture). Upon invitation the Swedish artist Veronica Brovall has created a temporary installation for the Showroom at Arndt & Partner. In her collages and installations the artist, who lives and works in Berlin, is dealing with existential issues and the fear for one's existence.