Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce the
representation of Jiří Georg Dokoupil in the
United States. The gallery will present an
exhibition of new works by the artist titled New
Paintings from January 8 – February 7,
2015 at 515 West 27th Street. This is the
artist’s first solo show in New York in over two
decades.
Comprised of large-scale works on canvas from
the artist’s Soap Bubble Paintings series, the
exhibition demonstrates Dokoupil’s continuously
varied experiments with non-traditional media
and chemical processes. As a founding member
of the Cologne-based Mülheimer Freiheit and
Junge Wilde (“Wild Youth”), a group of young
artists in the late 1970s, he rejected the
reductive, austere, and unapproachable nature
of Minimal and Conceptual Art during this time in
favor of a more animated style and saturated palette.
The first Soap Bubble Paintings were developed in the early 1990s by creating alchemical
compounds fusing pigment and soap in various proportions. Dokoupil stages dynamic areas of
tension between chemistry and art as the traces, now consisting of soap-lye enriched with metallic
pigments and diamond dust, accumulate in the form of two molecular layers and result in
translucent bubbles. The resulting organic forms settle on the canvas with calculated spontaneity,
displaying holographic tendencies and shifting perspectives. Seeking to reinvent traditional painting
techniques, Dokoupil’s pictures are aesthetically bold and dynamic yet conceptually rigorous.
Jiří Georg Dokoupil was born in Kronov—former Czechoslovaki—in 1954. In 1976 he studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Cologne and attended classes at the Universities of Frankfurt and New York’s
Cooper Union. His work is in the collections of Neue Galerie, Berlin; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; The
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Kunstmuseum Horsens, Denmark, The Rubell Family
Collection, Miami, FL; Société General Collection, Paris; Migros Museum, Zurich; and Centre Georges
Ponpidou, Paris. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
A fully illustrated, limited edition catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
For more information on Jiří Georg Dokoupil, please contact [email protected].
For press inquires, please contact Danielle Mayer, [email protected].
