Rubble is like a plant’s blossoms; it is the radiant highpoint of an incessant metabolism, the beginning of a rebirth. — Anselm Kiefer
Gagosian is pleased to announce Anselm Kiefer: hortus conclusus, an exhibition that surveys four decades of the artist’s landscape paintings. Capping a year of exhibitions across Europe and the United States, this is the first to feature his work in Hong Kong for more than ten years, and also Kiefer’s thirteenth solo exhibition at the gallery since 1998.
Kiefer emphasizes the allegorical aspects of landscape with the exhibition title, which is Latin for “enclosed garden” and derived from a book of the Hebrew Bible known as the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the term described the iconography of the Virgin Mary depicted in a walled garden, a sheltered place for meditation. For Kiefer, the idea of hortus conclusus offers a view of nature that is both sublime and idyllic, thematizing growth, renewal, and the cycles of life. As with the traditions of East Asian painting, his landscapes move beyond direct representation to convey responses to the forms and forces of nature, expressed in both art and poetry.
Central to his practice from the 1970s to the present, Kiefer’s landscapes are rooted in the symbolism of creation and destruction, history and memory. The canvases on view in Hong Kong envelop the viewer with rich colors and thick layers of paint, straw, and other materials, and include inscribed allusions to poetry and mythology. While some paintings represent land that has been burnt or barren, others envision lush growth and seasonal transformation.
More Details: https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2023/anselm-kiefer-hortus-conclusus/