Opening – 26 APR 2024, 6-9 pm

Football is a paradox. So trivial yet so serious. It is not a matter of life and death, the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly reputedly said: it is much more important than that. Or perhaps it is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, said Gary Lineker, the Germans always win. Painting is also a paradox, at least for Xie Nanxing. It is not the truth, he has said, but neither is it just a game. It is “more like a game that is close to the truth, or rather a truth-mimicking game”. He has expressed a “mistrust” of painting, and yet he has spent the last three decades engaged in a deliberate and meticulous studio painting practice.

Nowhere is Xie’s ambivalent, conflictual attitude towards painting more apparent than in the “canvas print” technique which he has often returned to over the last fifteen years and which he uses in several of these paintings. f o r a d e c a s a # 8, for example, is ostensibly the most abstract of the paintings in the exhibition – we see a central green circle, perhaps a centre circle, overlaid with faintly stippled polychromatic marks. As we continue to look, traces of figures begin to emerge to the left of the canvas, while to the right we see a harder-edged form and a rich patch of green reminiscent of the first painting in this series. These marks are in fact the literal traces of another painting which was made on an unstretched canvas that had been laid over the top of the surface we now see, such that some of the paint seeped through. That painting was then removed, never to be shown, and we are left with its “shadows” – evidence of painting having taken place.

And yet in this same series Xie Nanxing also embraces sheer painterly bravura, albeit interrupted by football scorecards, while in overtly citing Goya’s The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters (and not for the first time) Xie embraces his work’s place in a longer tradition of painting. Some paintings suggest abstraction, but others are uncharacteristically direct in their figuration. A football match can be tense and tactical, but it can also be an explosion of excitement. Catenaccio or heavy metal football. “Xie Nanxing’s paintings cannot be cast in the camps of either aestheticized objecthood or conceptual dematerialization”, the curator and art historian Ruth Noack has acutely observed, “they hover firmly in between”.

Opening – 7 JUN 2024

On the occasion of Capitain Petzel‘s sixteenth anniversary, the gallery is excited to present Sweet Sixteen, a group exhibition celebrating the artists who have been integral to its program since its inception in 2008. 

The collaborative vision of Gisela Capitain and Friedrich Petzel has uniquely united artists from both galleries on an international scale, resulting in ambitious exhibitions and the development of an original program. By highlighting these pivotal contributions, Sweet Sixteen pays homage to the diverse and highly distinct artistic practices that have been instrumental in shaping the gallery‘s identity and evolution.

The anniversary exhibition aims to showcase an array of works by artists that are emblematic of their respective practices, while also presenting pieces that challenge preconceived notions. Surprising contributions include a carpet created by Charline von Heyl, poetry coupled with drawings by Christopher Williams, a large-scale window graphic by Matt Mullican, and a sound installation by Peter Piller.

The focal point of the downstairs exhibition space will be Robert Longo’s 2022 film Sea of Change, An Homage to Winslow Homer. This film, rendered in Longo’s signature monochrome color scheme, pays tribute to Homer, an artist known for his idyllic rural scenes and dramatic New England coastlines. Longo’s film, rich with movement and the reality of changing tides, is contrasted with Sean Landers’ painted seascapes, which playfully echo the feelings of solitude present in Longo’s work. 

Also included are new works by Amy Sillman, featuring a canvas painting alongside a series of works on paper. Both are characteristic of the artist’s distinctive conceptual approach to abstraction and figuration, where constant experimentation and revision is key, making the process of creation as significant as the finished work. 

Among the selection are new works by two of the gallery’s more recent additions, the highly idiosyncratic practices of Austin Martin White and Stefanie Heinze, both of whom have had major solo presentations this year at Petzel Gallery. 

The exhibition will also highlight one of our key historic positions, Maria Lassnig, represented by works on paper. Drawings, for its degree of immediacy, was described by Lassnig as ‘closest to the idea’, and is considered to be of utmost importance in the context of the artist’s oeuvre.

The exhibition will feature contributions by Yael Bartana, Ross Bleckner, Barbara Bloom, Isabella Ducrot, Stefanie Heinze, Charline von Heyl, Sanya Kantarovsky, Sean Landers, Maria Lassnig, Robert Longo, Sarah Morris, Matt Mullican, Laura Owens, Peter Piller, Amy Sillman, Monika Sosnowska, Austin Martin White, and Christopher Williams