Published 18 NOV 2024

Opening – 9 NOV 2024, 6-8 pm
9 NOV until 20 DEC 2024

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Rineke Dijkstra at Bleibtreustraße 45, in Berlin. This is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. 

Rineke Dijkstra, one of the most highly regarded photographers of our time, achieved international recognition in the early 1990s with her portrait series of teenagers and young adults. In her photographs and video works, she develops a close connection with the people shown and captures their humanity through individual details such as a direct gaze or a characteristic gesture. Dijkstra accompanies some of her models for years to establish a trusting relationship. The artist’s works embody the human condition through universal aspects such as uncertainty, curiosity and vulnerability. Although the photographs have a spontaneous character due to their naturalness, the technical process of creating them is complex, as the artist uses an analogue large-format plate camera with a tripod. The concentration this requires from both the artist and the subjects creates an intense and intimate atmosphere. The people portrayed, including adolescents, schoolchildren, clubbers, bathers, emigrants and mothers, are united by a fundamental search for identity. 

The current exhibition presents photographs from various well-known series by Dijkstra, such as ‘Beach Portraits’, ‘The Buzz Club’, ‘New Mothers’, ‘Streets’ and ‘Parks’. During a two-year period of revisiting her archive, the artist had a fresh look at her oeuvre and subsequently published works that had never been shown before. In particular, she focused on photographs of duos or groups and the question of how the relationship between people becomes visible. Her protagonists wear matching clothes, pose similarly, hold hands or seem connected precisely because of their striking differences. Depending on the type of expression, every picture reveals a distinctive tension. The individuality of each person manifests itself in these works, especially in their relationship to others. 

Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 25, 1992, 2023, from the ‘Beach Portraits’ series, shows seven girls in swimwear against a minimal background of sea and sky. Facing the camera directly, they simultaneously emit a sense of youthful lightness and insecurity. Change and the extreme contrasting emotions that accompany it can also be seen in the work Tia, Amsterdam, June 23, 1994, 2024, which depicts a mother with her newborn baby. In the works from the series ‘The Buzz Club’, Dijkstra examines the meaning of self-imposed uniforms. Julia, Amsterdam, March 7, 2022, 2024, is based on the seventeenth-century painting De Briefschrijfster, 1655, by Gerard ter Borch. In both Borch and Dijkstra’s works, the protagonists are absorbed in their activities, seemingly oblivious to the outside world. Respectively lost in letter writing or the glow of a phone, they are shown in an intimate atmosphere focused entirely on them. This effect is intensified by the chiaroscuro (light-dark) technique, whose aesthetic Dijkstra here translates into photography. 

Dijkstra reinterprets the portrait genre with a unique visual language. Her exceptional eye for detail conveys subtle nuances and emotions in her photographs. Every work tells a story of its own. ‘I don’t want a pose in which people comply with a certain image they try to control and that reveals only the intention of how they want to be perceived,’ she explains. ‘What they have naturally is far more interesting to me.¹ 

Rineke Dijkstra’s work will be the subject of solo exhibitions at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, opening 8 November 2024; and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, opening 13 December 2024. 

Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held in international institutions including Espace Louis Vuitton, Munich (2024); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2023); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2022); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2019); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; De Pont Museum, Tilburg; Sprengel Museum, Hanover (all 2018); Hasselblad Foundation Center, Gothenburg; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museu Picasso, Barcelona (all 2017); Milwaukee Art Museum (2016); Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (both 2014); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2013); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York (both 2012); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2011); Tate Liverpool (2010); Fundació “la Caixa”, Barcelona; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (both 2005). 

Dijkstra’s works are in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Art Museum, Milwaukee; Baltimore Museum; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Fundació “la Caixa”, Barcelona; Goetz Collection, Munich; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Folkwang, Essen; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Sprengel Museum, Hanover; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others. 

¹R. Dijkstra in conversation with Jan van Adrichem, ‘Rineke Dijkstra’, Stedelijk Museum 1 Bulletin, no. 6, April 2005. 

Opening – 15 NOV 2024, 6-8 pm
15 NOV until 18 JAN 2025

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to announce Reversal of Fortune, a solo exhibition of new paintings on linen and paper by Louise Bonnet, at Potsdamer Straße 77-87, in Berlin. 

Internationally renowned for her emotionally charged depictions of the human form in unusual, often exaggerated poses, Bonnet explores difficult feelings such as fragility, melancholy, loneliness and grief in her work.

The title of the exhibition, Reversal of Fortune, insinuates a plot twist or turning point that leads to both tragedy and a moment of catharsis. The works all revolve around the notion of falling. In the paintings we see female figures slipping off beds, divans or couches, plummeting from unseen heights towards the ground, gliding or toppling headfirst, and lying on the floor, after a fall from beyond the picture frame. Exploring the feeling of downward descent as a recurring idea, the works come together to represent all the different strands of meaning that unravel for the artist from out of this theme. Bonnet explains: 

At moments, the act of falling is dramatic. In Asteria Red, the figure delves headfirst, the impact of the fall painfully visible on her distorted nose and strewn hair. The frailty of our human condition is made obvious in this work, through the danger inherent in daring to dance and the difficulty of maintaining balance.

Old Master painting has a strong influence on Bonnet’s work, in terms of theme and subject, as much as painting technique. Her practice of oil paint on linen creates a translucent layering of light and gentle flesh tones, reminiscent of Dutch 16th century painting. For subject matter, Bonnet is drawn to Pieter Bruegel, in particular his Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1560, which depicts a pastoral scene of people and animals going about their business. In the background, Icarus can just be made out by his flailing legs as he falls with a splash into the sea, so that for all our ambitions and search for power, the world moves on, indifferent to human suffering. The compositional elements of this source image appear in Bonnet’s A Splash Quite Unnoticed, where the legs of the protagonist are only just visible behind the still-life in the foreground. The title draws from a line in William Carlos Williams’ poem, When Icarus Fell, which was written about Bruegel’s painting. 

Falling simultaneously offers the narrative of an escape, such as in the Greek myth of Asteria, the Titan goddess of oracles, constellations and falling stars. She herself fell to earth to escape Zeus’ advances, and the island of Delos was created where she came to land. In Asteria Pink, the artist seems to evoke the elongated grace of Parmigianino’s Madonna with the Long Neck, 1534–1540, emulating with distorted exaggeration the Madonna’s stylised self-possession, her daintily bent hands and feet, and the flowing pink drapery which softly envelops her body. This mannered elegance is reminiscent of the slipping odalisques of 19th century painting, who were presented languidly reclining on their beds. Unconcerned with realistic proportionality, Bonnet’s figures are similarly devised to fit the composition into which they are placed. In contrast to their historical counterparts, however, they convey a spectrum of emotion rather than an ‘idealised’ female form.

Bonnet’s love for symbolism is apparent in the inclusion of flowers in a number of the exhibited works. The artist depicts begonia, a symbol of warning or caution, black irises, signifying danger, and dahlias, which represent instability. In Dahlia, the figure falling off a divan gazes up at a bouquet reminiscent of the one in Édouard Manet’s Olympia, 1863. As in Bonnet’s earlier work, the figures rarely look outside of the painting. The artist employs cinematographic techniques to let us gaze at her subjects unobserved, not in order to objectify but rather to find in their bodies a language for the emotions we suppress. While they are deeply rooted in art historical references, the works speak a universal language of embodiment, bringing a renewed perspective on the delicate tensions within ourselves. Bonnet’s work continues to resist easy categorisation, instead inhabiting a space of careful consideration and restraint, where narratives are felt rather than told. 

Louise Bonnet (b. 1970, Geneva) lives and works in Los Angeles. Bonnet’s work was presented in an institutional duo exhibition with Adam Silverman at Hollyhock House, Los Angeles (2023). Her work has also been exhibited in various group presentations including the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (all 2022); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2021); and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2019).

The artist’s work is held in various museum collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick; Denver Art Museum; Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Long Museum, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MAMCO Genève, Geneva; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai.