Opening: Friday June 1, 6-10 pm
Exhibition: June 2 - June 23, 2018
they may say your hair’s too long, but I don't care, with you I can't go wrong.
'I got you Babe' Sonny & Cher 1965
Dear Reader,
I wish I could offer you strategies of resistance against the louche power of those chocolates held out to melt in the hand of the rake before they’ll reach your mouth. Anticipating a most human weakness the artist s the following statement: Help! really? Is this a trick? a cheeky spoof? Or simply true? a bit of art asking for assistance. what’s with the art, what’s it need help for? Maybe art is in need of a friend? Or is it the artist who seeks support tackling his work? Haven’t you always wondered how you can, as a man, paint today?
Look at him, stripped from his blues and green, reaping in between by the stream. His sweat, a pearly neck, is the fruit of his labour; the travails of his own thinking. rarely you have been offered a more genuine act. And clearly, this exhibition is only there to furnish the artist with the occasion to paint a bit of your flesh. His reposing smile, quite spry, well kept and caught, its sassiness lurks behind coattails, disguising the dry remains of countless hours artistic pursuit.
Bist du immer so fleissig? - Ja sehr, auch gerne nebenher. There are cheeky tweets flashing, navel-gazing, ping-pong observations throughout the room, hahahahhard laughter followed by dumbstruck silence. No, they don’t need an extra hand, these drawings are quite capable of taking care of themselves. Conceived in a moment, they are allegedly precise, used exactly, as such convincing. collected and copy-pasted from scraps, they reflect: Look at them they look at water. In this case, eyeing a handful of large canvases with droopy strips of paint hung to dry, the artist’s most recent étude employing his painter/waiter apologue. Who is backing up who here?
The sleight of hand in action going strong shows no sign of exhaustion after years of training - the daily exercise a must - blowing the cover blank and now the offset is put to the test. When does a suggestion turn into a promise?
The artist has gathered here all the particular and rare elements which are in him. His observation of the world meets the meticulous execution - and vice versa - of applied internalized knowledge, refined neglection of skill, and your regular odd sort of afflatus thrown in, resulting in an informed product that can be considered as painting and it’s side stages. Now camping face-to-face, delicate in their solidity, they are playing a much private hide-and-seek en plein air, juggling Painting’s supremacy into oblivion.
So as Zola is pointing out to us when writing in 1867 about Manet’s Le dejeuner sur l’herbe, the veritable painter cleverly concocts a narrative merely as pretext to paint.
to cut a long story short, it’s a matter of love. no help is coming. resistance is futile.
your’s truly, the Writer.
Text: Vera Palme
Lennart Constant (*1989 in Offenbach am Main/DE) studied Fine Art at Städelschule Frankfurt am Main (Class of Christa Näher, 2010-2013 and Class of Monika Baer und Amy Sillman, 2013-2017).
STUDIO PICKNICK, Potsdamer Straße 118, 10785 Berlin, (in the backyard)
Opening hours: Sat., 2-7 pm and by appointment