Georg BaselitzWir FAhren Aus (We’re Off’) White Cube Bermondsey June 2016 I was curious to visit this exhibition of new drawings, paintings and sculpture by Baselitz. Focusing on the subject of aging and death, with presumably an ironic title? There is huge physicality in the creation of all this new work, belying both his 78 years and the images that show sagging skin on slumped and fallen human frames.
South Gallery 11
South Gallery 1 Nursing homes and burial sites are conjured but sex is intimated in the painted and drawn naked bodies, beds and erotic sculptures of comic yet potent scaled long legged high-heeled shoes. Made to look like carved charcoaled wood but in reality cast bronze.
ZeroDome 2015 My images He uses his usual process of trialling different media and interpretations of the same image.
‘Bedroom’ 1975 Georg Baselitz ‘Portrait de mes parents’ the artists parents 11 1924 Otto Dix In this mix of inspiration he has focused on his own early work ‘Bedroom’ from 1975, Otto Dix elderly parents sitting side by side on a sofa plus current polaroid’s of himself and his wife ‘Elke’ posed nude in the same mirrored position, making this body of work also speak of love and commitment. In his paintings and drawings he uses his usual process of trialling different media and interpretations of the same image; as he explores notions of time passing physicality and the self, distorting the viewers reading by inverting the images.
The monumental paintings appear ghostly doubly distorted by both inversion and the spraying of a haze like covering. On first encounter the sheer scale, colour palette, rotation, mark making and absence of both clothing and the male heads makes one think of celestial bodies in the night sky.
The clarity of some of the figures is drawn out with scraped marks defining and confirming limbs and faces in varying degrees to the final consummation of ‘Oven Soot’ 2015 where from a distance a near black painting is revealed to have tiny scratches into heavy textured surface.
The North Gallery shows an extensive series of 33 drawings rows of repeated investigation into the same images of himself and his aged wife but they are ripe with breasts and male organs defiant and still a focal point of them as couple.
The most colour impregnated painting of Elke dominates the far wall of the South Gallery 11, the cross hatching of life, fate etched into her palm are ripe for reading as she waves us goodbye or is it a enthusiastic hello? There will be no death or decay for these images, George and Elke immortality assured in the great collections. ‘We’re Off’
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