Baltic Vist December

Dirk Bell:

MADE IN GERMANY explores the enduring tussle between love and freedom, along with the universal structures that shape and control societies. Bell's delicate, romantic drawings and paintings are infused with myth and legend. Sensual, lyrical and almost hallucinogenic, his work is laced with references and associations that question our attempts to make sense of the world, our belief systems and the structures that control our societies.

Anslem Keifer

The starting point for Kiefer's work is an enduring fascination with myth, history, theology, philosophy and literature. For many years his painting was a means to come to terms with his native Germany’s past. More recently the subject of the artist's work has become ever concerned with religious traditions and the symbolism of different cultures. Kiefer's weighty subject matters are reflected in the monumental size of many of his works – their scale is such that many fill the viewer's field of vision. .

Kiefer's keen exploration of unorthodox materials – lead, ash, rope and human hair – bring an emotional potency and move his painting into the realm of sculpture. Among the works to be included in the exhibition are three paintings from the artist's early Parsifal series (1973), drawn from Richard Wagner’s last opera of the same name. In Palette 1981, Kiefer revealed the problematic legacy inherited by artists in post-war Germany: the artist's palette hangs from a single burning thread evoking shame, loss and the apparent impossibility of artistic creation.

Dan Holdsworth

Blackout brings together a remarkable new sequence of images taken in Iceland by British photographer Dan Holdsworth. Occupying a space between documentary and the make-believe, Holdsworth’s photographs combine traditional analogue methods with digital processing to transform the elemental terrain of a giant glacier as it melts away. The result is an other-worldly vision of the future. Reproduced at a grand scale, the blue of sky becomes the deep black of space, while the earth appears in negative, beyond imaginable human time and space.