TUE GREENFORT - YESIM AKDENIZ GRAF  

curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen

December 12 - March 6, 2004

Tue Greenfort

Tue Greenfort acts through very discrete actions in public or private places. This levity is in stark contrast to the ominous events in the places chosen by the artist. Look at the little fox taking a picture of himself while catching his meal in a lot. This reminds us that even animals lose their reference points. Can one benefit from cheating, as with that step in a Cologne wall, enabling the pedestrians to gain ten minutes by climbing the wall before arriving at an escalator. Same idea behind his petition to the Luxembourg municipal authorities to let him put a switch on a street lamp in our Avenue Gaston Diderich. This device will actually be in place from December 29th and January 5th and will give the citizenry a chance to use the lamp post as if it were a private fixture and thus reflect on the effect of a long-acquired habit suddenly undergoing such a radical change.Photographic documents restitute the artist’s projects in our gallery.

Through his projects, which at first sight appear harmless, Tue Greenfort reminds each of us of our responsibility when faced with the cunning changes in our societies. Tue Greenfort provokes this by integrating delicate artistic artefacts into our habitual behavior patterns. Each visitor may read into these works his own feeling of loss or, on the contrary, of gaining humorous or communicative energy.

Yesim Akdeniz Graf

The pictures presented by young Yesim Akdeniz Graf combine traditional features with modern art symbols. In her paintings, she marries symbols of 20th century western architecture with Islamic decorative elements, as well as a political iconography and certain cinographic dramatics.

Yesim Akdeniz Graf was the big revelation of the ‘deutschemalereizweitausenddrei” exhibition.

The artist studied at the Düsseldorf academy from 1997 to 2002 under Professor Dieter Krieg. In 2002, she receives a stipendium for the “De Ateliers” program in Amsterdam. Her paintings display an enigmatic quality which reminds us of some of David Lynch’s psychothrillers or J.G.Ballard’s fictional works on decadence and excentricity. With her paintings full of forebodings, this 25-year old woman shows us that rumblings about the end of painting are premature.