Eberhard Havekost’s Biography and Exhibitions at Saatchi-gallery

Eberhard Havekost was born on 1967 in Dresden, Germany, lives and works in Dresden and Berlin. Eberhard Havekost re-invents painterly supremacy. Taken from personal photos and media sources, his imagery is rendered to highlight the limits of their own mechanically reproduced distortion: speed is represented with the blurry lines of film, colors are unnatural, and grim buildings and landscapes are given a clinical rebirth. Seeing painting as a method of improving on reality, Havekost portrays his subjects with a harsh artificial light, making intimately recognizable scenes seem stiffly manufactured and strange, resonating with the newness of expertly packaged products. In Mobile 1, Eberhard Havekost paints a train carriage: attending only to its formal elements his familiar image is twice removed from reality, becoming a casual mixture of lines and squares, a pure representation of modernity and momentum.
Eberhard Havekost’s Shelf does the opposite of what a still life should. Unlike traditional still life painting where consumables are rendered as symbols of wealth and death, Eberhard Havekost conveys these ideas through the presentation of an empty display unit. Set against a dense black backdrop, Eberhard Havekost paints his shelves with the harsh dead light of department store showcases; glamour without product becomes a discomforting void. The lighting effect of the horizontal shelves carries the optical illusion of movement, as if this exhibition of nothingness is speeding past in continuum.
Eberhard Havekost often paints series of repetitive images to replicate the serial change of visual effect in nature. In Zelte II, Eberhard Havekost captures an idyllic view of an apartment block bathed in sunshine; it’s a transitory moment, a fragile instance of sublimity in the constant movement of light. Monumentalized in scale and enhanced through intensity of color, Havekost fixes this phenomenon in space and time. Like finding the perfect film still in 24 hours of footage, Eberhard Havekost isolates the defining climax. Through capturing the instantaneous his paintings resonate with an intense anticipation, frozen on the periphery of expectant flux.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2004
• Marvel Anton Kern Gallery, New York
• Brandung/Surf Galerie Gebruder Lehmann, Dresden
2003
• White Cube, London
• Beauty Walks A Razor's Edge Galerie Gebruder Lehmann, Dresden
2002
• Square Anton Kern Gallery, New York
2001
• Dimmer Galerie Gebruder Lehmann, Dresden
• Driver Museu Serralves, Porto
• J.F.B., Hobby Industries Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam
2000
• Premio Michetti Museo Michetti, Francavilla al Mare
• Mobile Galerie Gebruder Lehmann, Dresden
• Pressure- Pressure Anton Kern Gallery, New York
1999
• Kontakt Galerie Gebruder Lehmann, Dresden
• Statements Art Basel
• Flugplatz Reinsdorf Kunsthalle Luckenwalde
• Druck Druck Galerie für Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig
• Geitz, Luxus Kulturwissenschaftliches Institute, Essen.
Conclusions:
Based in Dresden, Eberhard Havekost often paints the city’s modernist-style buildings as a means to reference 20th century post-war politics and failed Utopian vision. Eberhard Havekost explores the parallels between these systemic ideas of perfection and the modes of ideal image construction. Working from his own collection of photos and video footage, Eberhard Havekost alters the original images on a computer: hues are subtly altered, forms imperceptibly stretched and skewed. These complications are then further translated through the process of painting.

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