Andy Hope 1930 Courbette Industria

In the organizer's words:

Guido W. Baudach Gallery is pleased to announce your ninth solo exhibition with Andy Hope 1930. Titled Courbette Industria, the Berlin-based artist will be showing new, primarily painterly works.

In the central series of works of the same name, Hope references a painting by Gustav Courbet, Continuous Horse from 1861, which depicts a harnessed white horse galloping through a forest with an empty saddle and reins tightened as if by a ghostly hand. The unusual motif, which is explained not least by the special history of the painting's origin - a rider originally sitting on the horse was subsequently painted over by Courbet for reasons that are not clearly handed down - is both taken up by Hope and concisely altered in various variations.

Hope, whose practice has always combined influences from classical modernism with those from popular culture, especially fantasy and science fiction, transforms the runaway horse into a robot-like species. Instead of white fur, a metallic surface shimmers. It has six legs, somewhat reminiscent of the futuristic design language of modernism. The strange scenery could have sprung from a Philip K. Dick novel; which also applies to the paintings as such.

With Courbette Industria 1930, Andy Hope adds a new chapter to the exploration of technoid forms of life and corresponding visions of the future that he has already pursued in earlier work cycles.