ARNOLD NEWMAN | RICHARD PARE
EXHIBITION Mar 2 — Apr 21, 2012
Exhibition Text
On the occasion of the major show on Soviet art and architecture 1915–1935 at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau, Baumeister der Revolution (Architects of the Revolution), which includes photographs from Richard Pare’s series Lost Vanguard, Kicken Berlin is dedicating its second exhibition of 2012 to a selection of his interpretations of the major structures of architectural modernism in the Soviet Union and of his visual research on Neuen Bauen buildings in Germany. Pare began hunting for the remnants of the “lost avantgarde” in the early 1990s, documenting what remained of the trendsetting architecture as well as the vacillating stance post-Soviet society has taken toward the cultural heritage. Pare’s works will be shown in the gallery and in Kicken II alongside pieces by Arnold Newman, one of the old masters of classic portrait photography. In his likenesses, Newman delved completely into the environment and work of his sitters – often artists – and thus helped shape the “environmental portrait” method. Newman’s early works from 1938 to 1941 of unusual everyday findings – façade details, street scenes, homely still lives – also manifest wellbalanced compositions. His focus was the play of light and shadow, texture and shape. These earlier works foreshadow the mastery of his later art.