Events/Openings

Friedrich Kunath
"Sentimental Air"
Opening: Wednesday, September 16, 2015, 6–9 pm
Exhibition: September 17 – October 31, 2015

On Wednesday, the 16th of September, Friedrich Kunath will open his 6th solo exhibition "Sentimental Air" at BQ. His work comprises different media from photography and print, drawing and painting to sculpture and video and arranges them in complex installations. Like a Gesamtkunstwerk, his exhibitions open up wondrous parallel worlds. Populated by motifs and characters from our cultural memory, the visitors encounter revenants from German Romanticism, foggy Northern landscapes and Californian skies, LP covers, cartoon characters or fragments of antique colossal statues – whether within the illusionary space of the painting or as three-dimensional objects that have escaped it and have entered the gallery space. Kunath’s works often balance along the delicate border of Kitsch and toy with the condition of the sensitive post-modern subject who is unable to cope with the countless possibilities that are open to them, and who escapes into an imaginary world where dreams, naïve-melancholic notions of past times and unachievable ideals merge into a kind of Disney Land. However, Kunath avoids any uncritical pleasure-ground escapism by adding his typical ironic aspect while still keeping the magic alive.

Friedrich Kunath was born im 1974 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz, and lives in Los Angeles. Next to numerous international group shows, he was the subject of institutional solo exhibitions in Europe and the US, such as Centre d’art contemporain Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, and Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2014), Sprengel Museum Hanover (2012), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2011), The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010), Kunstverein Hanover and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2009), or The Aspen Art Museum (2008).