Twilight is a Place of Promise
Eileen Agar, Bettina von Arnim, Merikokeb Berhanu, Huguette Caland, Caroline Coon, Hélène Delprat, Bracha L. Ettinger, Roey Victoria Heifetz, Andrea Joyce Heimer, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, Pia Krajewski, Jinju Lee, Iva Lulashi, Isabel Nolan, Pan Yuliang, Isabel Quintanilla, Anys Reimann, and Cecilia Vicuña

Published on 16 JUL 2024

Works by Iva Lulashi

Exhibition view: Twilight is a Place of Promise
Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul
Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Esther Schipper is delighted to present Twilight is a Place of Promise featuring the work of 19 international artists born between 1895 and 1996. The exhibition offers a perspective on the politics of image-making— personal, social, political, historical—taking painting and the artists’ diverse approaches to the practice as its focus. It is partisan in its polysemy, insistent only on the confluence of nuance and power.

Emerging three years after the gallery’s 2021 exhibition L‘Invitation au voyage, which invoked the freedom of imaginary travel in the form of fantasy or dreams, Twilight is a Place of Promise presents works of painters that look beyond conventional categorizations of subject and object, external and internal worlds. The works in the exhibition imagine spaces of inwardness, spirituality, and shared humanity, with the show’s title inspired by Harryette Mullen’s poem The Only Ones.

Twilight is a Place of Promise proposes an expanded understanding of painting beyond categories such as abstract and figurative, oil or pigment-based and collage or object-based. A central objective of the exhibition is to set aside fixed ideas of what are masculine or feminine characteristics of painting. The exhibition’s selection reevaluates assumptions about the meanings of form, subject matter and technique and their connection to the painter’s identity. The works in the exhibition have in common a fearless negotiation of circumstance, identity and form.

Exhibition view: Twilight is a Place of Promise
Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul
Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Left: Pan Yuliang Nude with Tulips, 1966 Ink and pigment on paper 92 x 65 cm	Right: Eileen Agar Still Life, 1964 Acrylic on canvas 63,5 x 76,2 cm (unframed) 66 x 78,7 x 4,4 cm Courtesy Estate of the Artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/ Seoul
Exhibition view: Twilight is a Place of Promise Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024 Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Exhibition view: Twilight is a Place of Promise
Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024
Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul
Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Another important theme of the exhibition is the choice to paint and live as an artist, decisive acts with social and political repercussions. Exhibited artists have devised unique approaches to the practice: be it by refusing overt subject matter and finding meaning in shapes, pattern and structures; by focusing on domestic and intimate scenes; by taking motifs such as the nude, historically the realm of male painters, and claiming it for themselves; or by appropriating found imagery and reworking it.

Installed in an exhibition design conceived by Emilia Margulies, Twilight is a Place of Promise highlights diversity and fluidity. The five elements of the architecture, built in wood and metal, converge in the center of the space to create multiple points of crossing, putting the works in dialogue and productive tension. In addition to a full digital presence with written and visual documentation, a program of talks with selected artists accompanies the exhibition.

With special thanks to Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein for her vision and curatorial work, and to Fousieh Mobayen for her support, which made this exhibition possible! We are very grateful to the following partners who facilitated the loans and consignments for this exhibition: Addis Fine Art, Africa Institute Sharjah, Artuner, Arario Gallery, Galerie Brockstedt, Brigitte Caland, Stephen Friedman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, VAN HORN, Lehmann Maupin, Kerlin Gallery, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Philipp Pflug Contemporary, PSM, and Prometeo Gallery Ida Pisani.