The exhibition Selbstmord. Suicide at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein presents two extensive groups of works by Valérie Favre. On show will be the Suicide cycle (2003-2013), consisting of 129 small format paintings, representing the self-chosen death, partly based on actual facts, partly fiction. The starting point of the works is the very moment of the radical decision to end one’s life, and the self-dramatization of the theatrical moment of death as well as the impact on the bereaved. In the classic 18 x 24 cm format, Favre outlines with reduced color shades different types of suicide. In her pictures, she refers to known suicide scenes from history, art and literature as well as from current newspaper reports.

The second group of works still/leben (de la fragilité des fleurs n°5) (2013), which was created especially for the exhibition, consists of large-format canvases as well as a collection of small format paintings and addresses the creative process of the artist. In preparation for her exhibition at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, for three months every day, Favre painted a new still life of a flower arrangement in her studio. She illustrates the dimension of time within the project in a diary-like style, with one brush stroke at a time on large format canvases. From the multitude of the small still lifes, one will be selected on every day of the exhibition and presented in the exhibition space.

Valérie Favre (b. 1959 in Evilard, Switzerland) teaches as a professor of painting at the University of Arts in Berlin since 2006. From 1980 to 1998 Favre lived in Paris, where she became one of the most important painters of France. Since 1998, she has been living and working in Berlin. In 2012 she was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. Lately her works were exhibited at: Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem (2012); Märkisches Museum Witten (2012); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012); Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine (2010); K21, Dusseldorf (2010); Museum of Art Lucerne (2010); Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin (2009); Museu de Arte de São Paolo (2009); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes (2009); Kunstverein Ulm (2008) among others.

Publication

To mark the exhibition the publication Selbstmord. Suicide. will be released by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, with a foreword by Marius Babias and an essay by Elisabeth Bronfen.

Program

Thursday, June 20, 2013, 7pm

Artist talk with Valérie Favre (artist, Berlin) and Marius Babias (Director n.b.k.)

In German language

Thursday, June 27, 2013, 7pm

The dilemma of painting, today.

Lecture by Michael Diers (Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg and Humboldt Universität Berlin)

In German language

Thursday, July 18, 2013, 7pm

The Power of Death: a question of representation.

Lecture by Elisabeth Bronfen (scholar of cultural studies, Professor of English and American Literature, University of Zurich)

In German language

Sunday, July 28, 2013, 8pm

Concert by La Stampa (Berlin/Hamburg)