Birgit Megerle

Bond


10.03.2023 – 15.04.2023

Galerie Neu is pleased to present Bond, Birgit Megerle’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Focusing on portraits, Birgit Megerle’s new exhibition brings into question sense of community and togetherness by staging paintings populated with multiple and heterogeneous figures: a mother and her child, an adolescent, brothers, protesters or a woman wearing a hat. 

While the works Track, Caprice, Midi and Interrelation (all 2023) are characteristic of the artist’s early works based on staged photographs of family, friends and brief encounters, the other two paintings in the exhibition go beyond the artist’s surrounding and personal archive, they give way to public figures and realm. The tenderness that emanates from Care IV (2023), depicting a scene from the black and white 1960 Luchino Visconti’s movie Rocco and His Brothers, contrast with the determination of the protesters in Signs (2023) which draws on images of last year protests following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade- the landmark ruling that had guaranteed abortion access nationwide for nearly 50 years. 

Precise, detailed, and delicately executed, the portraits are both artificial and distanced. The abstracted backdrops of the paintings appear to detach the figures from their environment, from any particular time. The predominant green and brown palette of the paintings, with sometimes grisaille tones referring again to the artist’s early works, interact with three extra walls specifically conceived for the exhibition, all painted in a different muted color. The temporary monochrome walls seem to both bind and obstruct relations among the staged characters. The works are rarely visible together at the same time. 

Birgit Megerle (b. 1975 in Geisingen, DE) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo or duo exhibition include Enfanterie at Galerie Kirchgasse, Steckborn (with Robert Müller) (2020), The Year Offat Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (2019), Soft Power at Galerie Neu, Berlin (2018) and The Painted Veil at Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus, CH (2017).

Back
Signs, 2023 Oil on canvas  150 x 120 x 3.5 cm 
Signs, 2023 Oil on canvas  150 x 120 x 3.5 cm 
Installation view, Birgit Megerle, Bond, Galerie Neu, Berlin, 2023
Installation view, Birgit Megerle, Bond, Galerie Neu, Berlin, 2023
Interrelation, 2023  Oil on canvas  150 x 120 x 3.5 cm 
1/5
Signs, 2023
Oil on canvas 
150 x 120 x 3.5 cm