Dream Watching – Gert-Jan Akerboom's Drawings and Murals on View at Kunstraum Richard Sorge

Kunstraum Richard Sorge is proud to present the first large overview in Germany of Dutch artist Gert-Jan Akerboom’s ink drawings on paper. The artist executed several large murals, turning the presentation into an immersive experience.

Eschewing easily interpretable statements in his work, Gert-Jan Akerboom prefers ambiguous signals, dreamlike in nature; they can be interpreted in myriad ways, none of them right or wrong. His drawings take their energy from this unfixed, shifting view of reality, synthesizing precise observation and associative speculation about alternative possibilities.

Akerboom’s drawings are filled with the objects and themes that trigger his “dreamwatching” state of mind: Architecture, archeology, ruins, mystic or religious sites and ritual. Collaging the possibilities and impossibilities of these inspirations, wedding them with fragments of popular culture, like Manga, computer graphics, photography and Street-art, the artist lets us witness candid, highly obsessive, painstakingly precise results that are proof of an unique sensibility and imagination.

Noted London based curator Ken Pratt has spoken of Akerboom's "deftness of skill":
“What Akerboom chooses to highlight –or place in shadow- with this most traditional of artistic crafts often makes a dramatic difference to what we actually see. What, in effect, could be fairly straightforward scenes are transformed into strange vistas with distorted perspective and areas of against-the-grain light and shade that change the normal into the mystical and ritualistic.”

Exhibition duration: July 8 - July 31, 2009
Open Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, 3 - 7 pm, and by appointment
Closing reception: July 31, 7 pm

Exhibition venue: Kunstraum Richard Sorge, Landsberger Allee 54, 10249 Berlin-Friedrichshain

Located at a romantically crumbling historic Berlin brewery, host of many art & event spaces and music studios, Kunstraum Richard Sorge reaches a young, and international audience, but adventurous discerning art lovers as well. The bountiful space is snugly hidden inside the building's Street-art covered walls. The artist-run art space focuses its exhibitions on subversive crafts and subcultures. Like the spy Richard Sorge, it independently works from a marginal, yet cosmopolitan position to ultimately save the world.

Kunstraum Richard Sorge
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin
Germany

This release was published on openPR.