Johannes Kahrs
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Johannes Kahrs (born 1965, Bremen, Germany) is an artist based in Berlin.
He completed his studies at the Hochschule der Künste [1] in Berlin in 1994.
Kahrs has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the 2002 Taipei Biennale [2], Manifesta 5 [3] in San Sebastian, “In/Site/Out” at Apex [4] in New York, the 1998 Berlin Biennale [5] and “Down’n Out” ant Zeno X Gallery [6] in Antwerp. He is represented by Galerie Almine Rech [7] in Paris and Zeno X Gallery [8] in Belgium.
Johannes Kahrs makes paintings and drawings based on images found in newspapers depicting people in the midst of movement, often engaging in, or as the victims of, violence. Kahrs removes all context from the images and renders them seemingly with his concentration firmly on composition, form and colour resulting in work that presents these potentially extreme, but ultimately unreadable, events as almost casual. Reminiscent of the figurative works of Gerhard Richter, who also takes his lead from found imagery, Kahrs’ work is somehow more psychologically affecting due to its occasional use of blocks of abstract colour to strategically obscure certain portions of his pictures. In the works which seem to explore violence and its everyday occurrence (as evidenced by the proliferation of images at Kahrs’ disposal), Kahrs is able to mirror the numbness of our experiences through his intentional focus on everything apart from the act itself.
[edit] External links
- Johannes Kahrs – Zeno X Gallery works, biography and cv
- Johannes Kahrs – Saatchi Gallery
- Jahannes Kahrs at Almine Rech
