Juliette Blightman / Dirk Bell
Paradise Lost
1. Oktober – 14. November 2010

Dirk Bell   „Lost“
Juliette Blightman   „Paradise“

Freedom and love, innocence and passion are central themes in the interdisciplinary work of Dirk Bell. At the Kunstverein Arnsberg, Bell is showing a new series of drawings and paintings that stem from a longing for a lost and no longer accessible paradise. Bell's motifs in the exhibition "Lost" are based on pictures and stories by photographer Richard Hamilton and on a travel book from Bali. Nature and eroticism characterize the motifs in vivid colours. But it is not a dream world - the dangers of sin are hidden in the background. The true legend is born in the contemplation, the beauty of the images is revealed through their drama. According to a legend in Bali (and a painting by Bell), the soul separates from the sleeping body. In this separation of body and mind, dream and reality, a gap is created, a tension, space or outer space, where one must sometimes lose oneself in order to find oneself anew. The light installation "Free" extends his painterly position - the luminous letters of this word develop into a cage and thus refer to the two aspects of freedom: freedom from and freedom to.

With quiet interventions and installations, the English artist Juliette Blightman intensifies the view of everyday situations. Her works are sensitive observations of our surroundings that give us a different approach to reality. At Kunstverein Arnsberg, she presents a selection of texts taken from John Milton's poem "Paradise Lost". The text sections refer to the works of Dirk Bell and are titled after his paintings. Word and image meet like two worlds in the viewer's mind and merge with their own experience. The apparent invisibility of Blightman's position is visualized anew in her second work, a ceiling fan that attempts to set the invisible in motion. Blightman's works operate on the edge of an existence that is easily overlooked. Her ephemeral interventions guide our attention, simple reality is to be discovered as multiplicity and tension. The bold decision to exhibit uncensored reality invites us not only to analyze and rethink it, but also to appreciate it.

The title of the exhibition is dedicated to the epic poem "Paradise Lost" by the English poet John Milton from 1667. The poem tells the story of the fallen angels' fall from hell, the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan, the Fall of Man and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Dirk Bell was born in Munich in 1969 and lives in Berlin. His last institutional solo exhibitions were at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden (2009) and the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2006). Blightman's forthcoming solo exhibitions are at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (October 2010) and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (February 2011).

Juliette Blightman was born in Farnham in 1980 and lives in London. Her work will be exhibited in the British Art Show 2010 and has recently been shown at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2010), GAK Bremen (2010), Serpentine Cinema London (2009), ICA London (2008), Magazin4 Bregenz (2007), and Whitechapel Project Space London (2007).