NEKYIA. NACHT SEH FAHRT - NIGHT SEE CROSSING – was the title of Birgit Jürgenssen’s solo exhibition held in 1987 at the John Hansard Gallery (Southampton, UK) featuring large scale drawings on paper. This narrative series explores the symmetry between night and day, light and shadow, reality and fantasy. Inverse and allusive silhouettes appear in her drawings, and through an enigmatic iconography the invisible gets visible.
Galerie Hubert Winter is pleased to exhibit, for the very first time in Vienna, a selection out of this series that has never been shown again in the past 30 years and that is particularly representative of Jürgenssen‘s exploration on the expressive moment.
“ (…) When looking at paintings there comes about a moment, that first instant of seeing, when the picture illumines. Like the haiku’s flash, this undifferentiated moment, this point of recognition exempts meaning, is void. (…) Following the coherence of that initial encounter our powers of differentiation lead us through the first vague and hesitant steps towards understanding the image. It is as if we have crossed into night, where in moonlight the world appears as half shadows and emergent forms. As we make our way through the dark we become aware that things are not what they might at first seem to be. The figures and forms that are perceived in the dark can change dramatically with examination.”
Julien Robson (NEKYIA. NACHT SEH FAHRT - NIGHT SEA CROSSING, exh.-cat. John Hansard Gallery. Southampton, 1987.)
Current and upcoming shows of Birgit Jürgenssen (1949 – 2003):
Women House. La Monnaie de Paris (October 20, 2017 till January 28, 2018)
FEMINIST AVANTGARDE OF THE 1970s from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND Collection, Vienna. ZKM, Karlsruhe (November 18, 2017 till April 8, 2018)
Virginia Woolf. An Exhibition Inspired By Her Writings. Tate St. Ives (February 10 till April 29, 2018)
The Shape of Time. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (March 6 till July 8, 2018)
Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung. Kunsthaus Graz (April 12 till August 26, 2018)
Birgit Jürgenssen. Schneegewitter. Kunsthalle Tübingen (November 10 till February 15, 2019)
