Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 1 BERLIN AT THE WALL G.L. Gabriel Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:58 Uhr Seite 2 for Fred and Mienske Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:58 Uhr Seite 3 BERLIN AT THE WALL G.L. Gabriel Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 4 G.L. Gabriel, “Blue Drawbridge at the Kupfergraben in East Berlin-Mitte”, mixed technique on canvas, 78.7 x 78.7 in. (200 x 200 cm), 1986 Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 5 Welcoming speech by Walter Momper, President of the State Parliament of Berlin, for the catalog of artist Gabriele Gabriel's opening exhibition at the DIETZ gallery in New York in October 2009. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989. Interest in this significant historical event remains unbro- ken to this day – historically and politically speaking, but also artistically. The visual arts captured events along this inhumane border in various ways. Its forbidding monumentality and its significance as an insurmountable dividing line between East and West throughout the city have fortunately been a matter of history for the past twenty years. The Berlin Wall left its mark on the city, where it forced a number of changes. During its construction, roads were diverted, death zones were created, and buildings were demolished or blocked up. In turn, the fall of the Wall spawned new houses, public squares, traffic routes and gathering places. Tourists who visit the memorials today and follow the Wall's path through the city are often deeply moved. They catch a glimpse of the reality that was forced upon Berlin's residents on both sides of the Wall for 28 long years. Families were torn apart, friends separated. An unobstructed view on both sides became impossible. Gabriele Gabriel has been living and working in Berlin for 50 years, and has documented the transformation of the city in many of her paintings. Since 2004, the State Parliament of Berlin also houses three of her impressive urban landscapes. The artist knows Berlin from the time before, during and after the separation. Gabriele Gabriel's work reflects her great interest in the urban scenes of Berlin. I would like to thank the artist Gabriele Gabriel for her curiosity about the city and the impact it has had on the rest of the world, and I wish her all the best for the exhibition. Walter Momper President of the State Parliament of Berlin At the time of the fall of the Wall in 1989, Walter Momper was the governing mayor of West Berlin. Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 6 G.L. Gabriel, “Wall, by Night at the Spree River by the Reichstag”, mixed technique on paper, 30.7 x 34.3 in. (78 x 87 cm), 1987 Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 7 Berlin – Revisited In October 2009, I will be happy to present a selection of the recently created print work by G.L. Gabriel at Dietzspace, a small alternative exhibitions space in Tribeca, New York’s newest fashionable Downtown area. Gabi Thieler, aka G.L. Gabriel, and I met at the Hoch- schule der Künste in Berlin in 1976. We both survived our first year with Professor Knispel, a hard-driving Ex- Bauhaus teacher, who had escaped from East Germany, and who made us work from nine to five, following a very narrow curriculum. After this mandatory regiment, we both chose the class of K.H. Hödicke, the most avant- garde, youngest and wildest professor at the academy. Spending much time together, I was very early aware of Gabi’s immense talent as a painter. I enjoyed dressing up and sitting for her, listening to music, and observing her painting and tackling ever-bigger canvases. Our closeness was also a need for combating the dominating male supremacy of our neo-expressionist classmates, like Fetting, Middendorf, and Salome. Women painters were just in the minority at the school as well as the bars and clubs where everyone hung out. In the early 1980’s, the wall was still surrounding Berlin, and Berlin was a pretty small town. Although still enrolled as a student, I spend many months in New York City, making super 8 movies and taking in the art and music scene. After school, I moved to New York City for good, and we lost touch for a while. Although, I followed her career from afar, her work has always managed to deeply surprise and move me. Her paintings became more beautiful and daring with each catalog I received. They became dense and abstracted down to their barebones essence with no room for frills or hesitant moments. They seemed to be created in one big effortless sweep, with paint just floating above the surface, held in check by black charcoal markings. Her handwriting. The work presented in this catalogue exhibits the same handling of paint and subject matter. Unnecessary objects are filtered out, only the main focus remains. Naturally, Berlin has changed a lot since I left in 1982. I am sure I won’t recog- nize the city as it grew, merged, and became a European Metropolis. However, looking at Gabi’s images, I see the timeless structures that still match my memory. As an artist and curator, I believe G.L. Gabriel remains one of the great painters, who came of age at the height of the Neo-Expressionist era of the 1980’s, and who still needs to be discovered by the broader art world. Dir. Karin Luner, New York, 2009 Photo: Dora Champbell, Dir. Karin Luner at the Dietzspace Gallery, 2009 Broschuere:Layout 1 16.09.2009 16:31 Uhr Seite 8 THE MAKING OF "FACTORY AT THE WALL" This captures all of the image informa- tion, including the barely perceptible, An image of an image. A challenge for reproduction. G.L. Gabriel’s technique for printing. This data is then transfer- uses high-resolution photographed panoramic images on barite photo paper as a red to the printing plate by means of a basis over which she paints a thin layer of color. The precision of the photographic lossless CTP standardization. In short document vanishes in the emotional view of the repainted cityscape, much in the order, the enormous printing machine sense of an interplay: the perceived psyche of the place converges on silhouetted is properly adjusted. The first color points of reference in the black-and-white copy. This series "Factory at the Wall" print from the series "Factory" is in the exists in different collections and at different locations. Twenty years after the fall delivery tray. He holds up a spectral of the Wall, it is endowed with a new timeliness. photometer to the surface of the photo How does one go about implementing a high-quality, limited-edition reproduction depth. The device is the size of a small to be exhibited in New York as unique works of art? A photographic reproduc- book. He uses it to measure color den- tion seems the best solution to remain true to the original material, for it draws sity. The display indicates a value of 2.8. "The contrast range of the human eye on the photo print, which already forms the basis for G.L. Gabriel's paintings. can detect values of up to 3.0 optical density," he says, "and that is what I want to However, the larger the original format, the more difficult its reproduction achieve." Dieter Kirchner holds up another photograph. It shows the Bibliothèque becomes. The technique of artistic photo-reproduction does not come out of National in Paris by the photographer Manfred Hamm, printed on conventional nowhere, but rather has its roots in centuries-old traditions – from wood carving, photo paper. The values are clearly lower in this picture, and the sharpness is also from Gutenberg's movable type printing and the first lithographies of Alois reduced. Kirchner peers critically through his magnifying glass as he holds up a Senefelder to the method of offset printing. Their defining marks are the limited second draft print of the Bibliothèque National, printed this time using the Skia edition, the signature, and sometimes the seal of authenticity. A new worldwide method. The image gains notably in sharpness and contrast. The new printing development for the production of high-resolution large-format photos is the method allows Kirchner to produce up to a third greater contrast range, meaning "Skia Photography" method, developed by Dieter Kirchner. G.L. Gabriel is the increased sharpness, a greater image range, depth and color accuracy. It is not un- first visual artist to make use of his method. common for an image printed with the new method to suddenly reveal shadings that previously did not even seem to exist. Kirchner has specifically developed his A trip to Hannover. The making of the series "Factory at the Wall". Dieter own color blends that are especially easily gradated. Kirchner is a reprographer and inventor, born in 1943. He has been working in his field since 1964, and he actually lives in the Saxon city of Radebeul and in Three draft prints were so far unable to withstand his and Gabriel's careful scru- Berlin when he isn't travelling to the printing press in Hannover. Here lies the tiny. A further print seems suitable and is already laid out on the delivery table. offset printer XL 105, a product of the traditional manufacturer Heidelberger G.L.