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Tony Just exhibition 27 February – 17 April 2010 Wednesday – Saturday 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment Sommer & Kohl are pleased to present the first solo exhibition with new works by Tony Just (*1969, USA). “The ways in which people see and how they then interpret what they see are themes I think about when working. This exhibition of paintings includes images based on a graffiti of a dripping eye, the original ten images of the Rorschach test, and the character Rorschach from the comic book series Watchmen. Using elements of abstraction, representation, illustration and duplication I try to produce paintings which show the infinite possibilities of interpretation. The magic of seeing images revealed or dissolved. To move the viewer just a little bit closer to seeing something they may have missed.“ Tony Just Starting point for Tony Just’s exhibition is a graffiti of a dripping eye that was tagged around New York City. He takes up this image with an interest in its symbolic as an archetypal talisman to ward off evil or envy, used in many Mediterranean cultures. Other works are based on the 1980s graphic novel Watchmen, featuring superhero characters no longer allowed to do their work. One of the main characters is Rorschach, a psychopathic vigilante who wears a white mask containing a symmetrical but constantly shifting ink blot pattern. Rorschach went underground and continued fighting crime from there. The story reflects contemporary anxieties and skips through space, time and plot, classifying itself as a nonlinear narrative. Another important impetus for the paintings is the Rorschach test itself. It is used to examine personality characteristics and emotional functioning by recording and analyzing a subjects' perception of ten different inkblots. Tony Just’s works will be included in the exhibition The Berlin Box, curated by Friederike Nymphius, at CCA Andratx Art Foundation in Mallorca from 3 April to 31 October 2010. Recent solo exhibitions took place at Galerie Maisonneuve in Paris and Gavin Brown’s enterprise in New York. Tony Just’s work is featured in Bob Nickas’ new publication Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting, published by Phaidon Press, London. For further information and/or images please contact Sommer & Kohl.

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Black and light David Bill, Jakob Bill, Anne Blanchet, Geneviève Claisse, Emmanuel, Freddy Fraek, Gun Gordillo, Michalis Katzourakis, Françoise Malaprade, Mehdi Moutashar, Dario Perez-Flores, Jesus Rafael Soto, Haruhiko Sunagawa, Victor Vasarely opening 15 January 2010, 6 – 9 pm exhibition 16 January – 13 February 2010 (gallery closed 28 – 30 January) Wednesday – Saturday 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment On the occasion of this year’s Berlin-Paris exchange Sommer & Kohl are very happy to present Galerie Denise René as a guest. Denise René opened her gallery on the day of the liberation of Paris in 1944 with an exhibition by Victor Vasarely. Her major breakthrough came 1955 with the legendary exhibition Le Mouvement, where she showed kinetic artists of different generations for the first time together (Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Tinguely, Jesus Raphael Soto amongst others). In the 1970s Galerie Denise René had five exhibition venues in Paris, Düsseldorf and New York. The exhibition Black and light shows works by artists of different generations from the programme of Galerie Denise René, all of whom deal with constructivist, concrete and kinetic art. The idea to ask Galerie Denise René for the Berlin-Paris exchange came about because Knut Henrik Henriksen was invited by Andrea Kroksnes (Senior Curator, Nationalmuseum, Oslo, N) in 2008 to participate in the exhibition “DUO“ together with Hans Arp at Galleri Würth near Oslo. Galerie Denise René has been instrumental in building the collection Würth from the beginning and she kindly assisted with questions during the installation of the show. For example, prints by Arp were installed, for the first time, according to a sketch by Vasarely; an installation made possible due to the ceiling height at the Galleri Würth. In Paris, Knut Henrik Henriksen will produce a site-specific work in the space of Galerie Denise René, rive gauche (196 Boulevard Saint-Germain), which enters a dialogue with historical positions of the gallery. This exhibition will be on view from 29 January until 6 February 2010. For further information and/or images please contact Sommer & Kohl.

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Knut Henrik Henriksen Sticks to measure volume (Sommer & Kohl) to be rebuilt somewhere else and other works opening 11 September 2009, 6 – 9 pm exhibition 12 September – 24 October 2009 Wednesday – Saturday 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment “The line is made up of an infinite number of points; the plane of an infinite number of lines; the volume of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume of an infinite number of volumes...” Jorge Luis Borges Sommer & Kohl are pleased to present the first solo exhibition with new works by Knut Henrik Henriksen (*1970, Oslo). Knut Henrik Henriksen works with close reference to the exhibition space. Size and shape of his sculptures often are determined by architectural details and historical changes within the public realm. For our exhibition, Henriksen has developed several sculptures that deal directly with the shape and the character of the exhibition space. The artist removes an existing wooden wall in the gallery in order to lay bare the structure behind it. He cuts this wall using curved lines which reflect the proportions of the gallery space, and arranges the individual parts in a new manner on another wall. The resulting wall relief visualises invisible lines and in this way creates a cast of the space. For another work, Henriksen measures the gallery by means of wooden sticks and coloured tape. With this measuring system an aesthetic object is created which can exactly replicate a particular volume in another location. Henriksen’s way of working comprises an infinite potential for sculptures which all refer to a given space. He measures rooms, visualises structures, builds or dismantles walls and makes casts of historical changes within a space. Knut Henrik Henriksen's works are on view until 20 September 2009 in the exhibition Beyond These Walls at South London Gallery, London, UK. Past exhibitions were in 2008 DUO Hans Arp/Knut Henrik Henriksen, Galleri Würth, Nittedal, N; 2007 The Re-conquest of Space, Overgaden, Copenhagen, DK; Poor Thing, Kunsthalle Basel, CH; Various Small Fires, Royal College of Art, London, UK and 2006 All that is Solid Melts into Air, Frac des Payes de la Loire, Nantes, F. A permanent installation will be on view in the tunnel of the new Kings Cross Station in London from 2010. For further information and/or images please contact Sommer & Kohl.

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