Quick Facts
Biography
Dennis Rudolph (born 1979 in Berlin, Germany) is a conceptual artist working in performance, video, painting, graphics and writing. His artistic practice derives its primal momentum from a melancholic reworking of the heritage of western culture. Conceiving contemporary art in relation to this backward gaze, Rudolph picks up topics associated with unfinished works of mourning.
Biography
Rudolph lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. He studied at the Language and Cultural Institute in Beijing, the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and the Berlin University of the Arts, where he graduated in 2004. Since 2004 his work has been on show in galleries in Europe and the US.
Work
In his first body of work, featuring explicitly traditional artistic media (such as oil painting, ink drawing and copperplate etching), Rudolph addressed German National Socialism with regard to its belated appropriation of the pre-modern entanglement of art and cult. „Deutsche Ahnengalerie“ (2006-2008), for example, is a portrait series based on photographs of nameless World War II soldiers, found on Berlin flea markets. The idealized style of these antique-like panel paintings referred to the religious form of the icon.
Since 2012, Rudolph has been involved with the project of building the gates of paradise/hell in California City. Within the framework of this large scale project, Rudolph sets out to create an artificial threshold in the midst of the Mojave Desert, most prominently drawing on arthistorical predecessors such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Auguste Rodin. As a conceptual piece, "The Portal" involves modern spulptural practices, documentary techniques, as well as the staging of promotional performances which bring up issues of fundraising and negotiate the role of the artist in the 21st century.
Exhibitions
- California Dreaming, Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin (2014)
- Genèse de l'Enfer, Galerie Olivier Robert, Paris (2014)
- THE PORTAL Yurt, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2014)
- PAINTING FOREVER!, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2013)
- Paradise Lost, Concord Art Space, Los Angeles (2012)
- Hallewujah, Apart, Stuttgart & Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2011)
- Nemesis. Das Grosse Glück, Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam (2010)
- Black Hole, Kunsthalle Andratx, Mallorca (2009) - curated by Friederike Nymphius
- The Holy War, Chapter I, The Sacrifice of Youth, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York (2008)
- Berlin Noir, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York (2007) - curated by Felix Ensslin
- Männerfantasien, Chung King Project, Los Angeles (2007) - curated by Ellen Blumenstein