Events/Openings

Gallery Barbara Thumm is presenting two female artist, Teresa Burga (born 1935 in Peru) and Anna Oppermann (born 1940 in Eutin deciesed 1993), who have redefined artistic practice in the seventies. Both positions, each in their own way, are still and more than ever highly influential in contemporary discourses about subjectivity and social relevance of artistic production.

On Saturday, the 2nd of June, 5 pm, there will be a talk in the gallery about these two specific methodologies and their contemporary relevance. The invited speakers are: Teresa Burga, Miguel A. Lopéz (curator), Ute Vorkoeper (curatorin) und Iris Dressler (Württembergischer Kunstverein).

Since the mid-1960s Oppermann had concerned herself with facets of and shifts in gazes, attitudes, light cast on human positions, relationships and problems, and had presented the complexity of perception and reflection in ways that could be directly seen and experienced in her so-called ensembles.

As Ute Vorkoeper who is an expert for Oppermanns oeuvre, writes: "The ensemble Theory of Emotions, is now publicly exhibited for the first time in the Galerie Barbara Thumm – together with photographic work documenting the ways in which Anna Oppermann reflected on her method, which developed gradually through the artistic process of creation, and together with a group of self-portraits also only discovered posthumously. These photographic self-portraits in different poses, disguises and shifting arrangements were created from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The artist herself kept them together as a group, but they were never made public. However, the artist’s shifts in role and perspective – sometimes drastic, sometime subtle – are so remarkable and touching that we have taken the decision to publish them posthumously.

Since spring 2010 gallery Barbara Thummis representing the estate of Anna Oppermann. They are pleased to announce that Oppermann will be part of the 30th Sao Paulo Biennial this autumn. The museum Abteiberg is currently displaying the new aquisition Künstler Sein.

To this day, the work of Teresa Burga (Iquitos, 1935) holds an exceptional position within Latin American discourse on art. From the 1960s onwards, Burga developed her pop and conceptual art in a country that was ruled by a nationalist military regime between 1968 and 1980, and thus at first she had to overcome significant obstacles in order to exhibit and become known. Accordingly, her artistic endeavours took a path parallel to populist demands of the time for a "Peruvian national" art. On this parallel course, in an extensive series of drawings, sketches and installations completed during the 1970s, Burga developed her method of constructing subjectivity using gestures and repetition.

Her most important exhibition of this time was Autorretrato. Estructura. Informe. 9.6.72 (Self-portrait. Structure. Report. 1972). In this wide-ranging project, the artist used her own body to create a medical map of herself – using drawings of her profile and photographs of her face, an ECG and a light that displayed her cardiac function, and a biochemical haemanalysis. Autorretrato not only was and is an ironic reflection on the traditional, pictorial concept of the "self-portrait", but also engages critically with processes that seek to standardise the subject.

Teresa Burga was recently presented in an extensive retrospective, Die Chronologie der Teresa Burga. Berichte, Diagramme, Intervalle at Württembergischer Kunstverein in the autumn 2011, as well as in the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011.

The juxtaposition of these two artists Burga and Oppermann is indicative for the programmatic interest of gallery Barbara Thumm to re-look and evaluate groundbreaking conceptual artist practice from th 1960ies to 1980ies and to reposition them into contemporary practice.