Emmanuel Bornstein / Lotte Laserstein

Pensée

The Kunstraum Potsdam cordially invites you to the vernissage of "Pensée" with works by Emmanuel Bornstein and Lotte Laserstein.

Greeting:
Mike Geßner

Introduction:
Dr. Anna-Carola Krausse in conversation with Emmanuel Bornstein

Exhibition period:
14.04. - 26.05.2024

With the exhibition "Pensée" by Emmanuel Bornstein and Lotte Laserstein, Kunstraum Potsdam is continuing its exhibition series in which dialogues are opened between artistic positions that at first glance seem to have nothing in common, but in which astonishing similarities can be discovered on closer inspection.

Emmanuel Bornstein, born in France in 1986, and Lotte Laserstein, born in Prussia in 1898, are separated by almost 100 years and completely different backgrounds.

He grew up in Toulouse and moved to Berlin in 2009, which attracted him as a vibrant art metropolis and where he is now regarded as one of the most important young painters. She, one of the first female graduates of an art academy in the 1920s and a celebrated star of the avant-garde scene, flees Berlin in 1937 for Sweden, where she escapes the Nazi terror but is no longer able to build on her promising career start in Germany. When she fled, she was as old as Bornstein is today. It is only recently that her work has finally been rediscovered.

As different as the biographies of Bornstein and Laserstein are, and as few similarities and parallels there seem to be between them, there are surprisingly many similarities in their art.

Both are of Jewish origin, which they process or at least hint at in their works. Both devote themselves exclusively to painting; even in their drawings, a painterly gesture is always perceptible. Both are only interested in the figurative; abstraction is only used as a subordinate, serving component - if at all. Both devote themselves meticulously to the portrait; the human face in all its facets becomes a defining setting for their art. Both derive flower paintings from the portrait, which form a second essential pillar of their painting. And both ultimately compose large, lush, sophisticated paintings that subtly tell of a deep inner and outer conflict and oscillate between despair and hope, euphoria and laconicism, rebellion and melancholy.

The "Pensée" exhibition at the Kunstraum Potsdam brings all these similarities to light, while at the same time pointing out the differences that can also be found in the works. It invites the visitor to filter out those peculiarities from the paintings that are indisputably due to contemporary taste and those that demonstrate something like universality and universality. That which characterizes great art. That which makes it endure. That which both Laserstein and Bornstein seek - and find.