Gerd Rohling⎟Sweetart (Rosinen für München)

Gerd Rohling’s exhibition „Sweetart (Rosinen für München)“ reflects on a complex dialogue between the poetry of Romanticism and the accelerating globalization of the world, replacing Eurocentrism. Having exhibited already at Harald Szeemann’s Venice Biennale, the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin or Museo arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Rohling explores in his works for the exhibition in Munich the phenomenon of human memory. Central to his exhibition is the tension between Novalis’ maxim of not presenting the world „as it is, but as it could be and must be“ and the kaleidoscopic face of reality as a recurring motif. While the series "Momenti Colorati" depicts moments of enlightening insight and intense experience, culminating in "Peggys Party" as the central work, it can also be seen as a metaphor for Rohling's devotion to revolutionary Romanticism and its contemporary 21st-century framework. In an interplay between non-compliance and attack, with the work "4 farbiges Wunder ohne Erklärung" Rohling explores the vital theme of a progressive collapse of all divisions in private and public realms. The contemporary individual is increasingly forfeiting the spaces for personal withdrawal and to an ever greater extend finds his own viewpoint disappearing in the tide of the media. Extending our image of the world, Gerd Rohling started in New York his ongoing series of paintings under the title "Sweet 'n'sour". The artist incorporates the strange constellation of dots on the pavement, remains of chewing gum, into a new image of our imagination, challenging our memory.

Gerd Rohling (born 1946, lives and works in Berlin) moved to West Berlin in 1971, studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Gerhard Bergmann until 1977, and in the painting class of Karl Horst Hödicke, with whom he became a master student. As a fellow student of Salomé he was in the earlier times associated with the gestural painting of the "Neue Wilden". In 1979, together with Frank Dornseif, Ter Hell and Reinhard Pods, he founded the Berlin artists' group and self-help gallery of the same name, 1/61. In 1979 he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize. A year later, in 1980, he received the PS1 Fellowship in New York. Since then, Gerd Rohling has worked in the fields of painting, object art, sculpture and film and had solo exhibitions in museums in South America, Holland, Italy, Africa, India and Germany.

In 2001 he exhibited his project „Water and Wine" at the Biennale di Venezia, curated by Harald Szeemann. The installation was subsequently shown at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin in 2003 and at the Hamburger Bahnhof in 2009.

In 2013, he conceived a complete installation for the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art with the exhibition 'Inside - Outside', which showed the more recent series of works 'Immer im Bilde - Rouge' and 'Sweet(n) Sour', and in which Rohling used films alongside paintings and sculptures in a 'playful manner'. All the works were acquired by the Böckmann Collection, Berlin. Further solo exhibitions were among others, 2018 "Der Sprung", Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig and 2021 "Birthday Lucio Fontana", Villa Grisebach Window, Berlin.

Image: Gerd Rohling
"Peggys Party 2001“, 2016
Transparent lacquer, plexiglass, steel frame,
tin hood with lamp and bottles with colored ink.
Image dimensions 162 x 171 cm
Bar dimensions 84 x 66 x 39 cm