Crone Wien presents the solo exhibition Claims by the French-German artist Emmanuel Bornstein. On view are 14 new expressive paintings in which the artist refers directly to his biography, his family and his Jewish origins. 

Bornstein was born in Toulouse, the son of a playwright and a theater director. He began painting at the age of 12, studying first at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and later at the Universität der Künste in Berlin with Leiko Ikemura.

In his haunting, figurative paintings, he often explores his Jewish heritage and the power of written traditions. In the 14 new works in Claims, we also encounter ciphers, figures, gestures, and symbols that seem to build a bridge from yesterday to today, only to immediately tear it down again. They ask about own guilt and that of others, about the possibility and impossibility of forgiveness, about mechanism and consequences of forgetting. They cry out, suffer, are silent, hopeful, strong and weak at the same time. In their imagery, they want to tell what words cannot tell.

Emmanuel Bornstein was born in 1986 and has lived in Berlin since 2009. His works are in numerous private and institutional collections in New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and Istanbul. The Musée Départemental de la Résistance in Toulouse is currently showing his solo exhibition "Three Letters", in July 2021 a large overview of his works will follow in the Château Laréole in Toulouse and in February 2022 a solo exhibition in the Kunsthalle Rostock.

Deborah Feldman, author of the novel "Unorthodox", on which the Netflix series of the same name is also based, has written an essay on Bornstein’s new works titled "Der springt noch auf". You can find it at this link (https://www.galeriecrone.com/bornstein). Feldman and Bornstein will guide you through the exhibition in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VniDCldUcTg).