ART DÜSSELDORF
With works by artists like Jacqueline de Jong and David Roth, take a look at this year's edition selection.
This year’s art fair edition has a wide variety of mediums and artists. From the widely known and established artists like Jaqueline de Jong and her work Portrait de mon père (1961), Otto Boll and his piece Ohne Titel (2020), David Roth and Untitled (2010-2022) or the photographer Anton Corbjin and the work Eva Herzigová, Paris (2003). The fresh presence of artists like Elisa Alberti with Ohne Titel / Untitled (2022), Joseph Montgomery and Image Five Hundred Fifteen (2020), and Radenko Milak with his Microplastic from the beach (2021).
Anton Corbjin (The Netherlands, 1955), photographer, filmmaker, and video artist, has captured exquisite black and white pictures of people as famous as Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley. His photography is known for showing intimacy, a carefully chosen instant captured for life. Also, the way he plays with light gives a feeling of stillness, almost like the people he portrays were not even people but statues.
Elisa Alberti (Italy, 1992) speaks a language where abstraction rules the conversation. She plays with straight and curved lines, as well as with color gradations. In Ohne Titel / Untitled (2022), the minimal style and the black with beige hues give the work an aura of elegance.
Joseph Montgomery (USA, 1979) uses a vast number of materials to produce his pieces, such as clay, cardboard, fragments of wood, concrete, paper, working with oil and acrylic paint, wax, lacquer, and gouache or fiberglass. The result is unique works; in each one, we can find a new pattern that was not used in the others. Image Five Hundred Fifteen (2020) is one of his most exciting productions, having used gouache, pigment transfer, paper, and acrylic on cedar and plywood.
The delicateness in Otto Boll’s works (Germany, 1952) gives them a fragile and ephemeral appearance. The simplicity and minimalism are apparent, but also the way they camouflage with their surroundings becoming almost invisible at times. Ohne Titel (2020) is one of those examples, even though not the most extreme; some pieces by the artist are only made of thin slices of black steel.
David Roth (Austria, 1985) has brought to the fair his signature use of color in Untitled (2010-2022), a whirlpool of superimposed oil paint of different shades, creating a large combination of pigments, which are almost escaping the canvas. The thick layers of color give this piece a strong appearance despite its dimensions.
Radenko Milak (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1980) is known for his large-scale black and white watercolor paintings. Still, in this project, Microplastic from the beach (2021), he has chosen color to depict how the microplastics are viewed when looked through a microscope and their massive impact of it on the environment.
Jacqueline de Jong (The Netherlands, 1939) and her sinuous figures, sometimes nearly reaching abstraction, like in her work Portrait de mon père (1961), where, as the title says, portrays her father, violently approaching the representation. It’s hard to find out where the figuration is. This work possesses an angry tint; the 1960s was a period in de Jong’s work where she studied expressive abstraction.
Joseph Montgomery. Image Five Hundred Fifteen (2020). Gouache, pigment transfer, paper, and acrylic on cedar and plywood. 16 1/10 × 10 3/5 × 2 in. 41 × 27 × 5 cm. Dürst Britt & Mayhew.
Elisa Alberti. Ohne Titel / Untitled (2022). Acrylic on canvas. 55 1/10 × 39 2/5 in. 140 × 100 cm. Krobath.
Jacqueline de Jong. Portrait de mon père (1961). Oil on canvas. 44 4/5 × 35 in. 113.7 × 89 cm. Dürst Britt & Mayhew.
Otto Boll. Ohne Titel (2020). Artificial stone and black steel. 9 4/5 × 9 2/5 × 9 2/5 in. 25 × 24 × 24 cm. Edition of 5. SCHÖNEWALD.
Radenko Milak. Microplastic from the beach (2021) Watercolor on paper mounted on wooden panel. 78 7/10 × 55 1/10 in. 200 × 140 cm. PRISKA PASQUER.
David Roth. Untitled (2010-2022). Oil on canvas. 16 1/10 × 13 in. 41 × 33 cm. Dürst Britt & Mayhew.
Anton Corbijn. Eva Herzigová, Paris (2003). Pigment print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Paper, mounted on Aluminium. 49 1/5 × 49 1/5 in. 125 × 125 cm. Anita Beckers.
