WAYNE BARKER (RSA) und NICCOLÒ PICCOLOMINI (I)

KulturAXE Studio Gallery ‘White horses’ / Sechsschimmelgasse 14, 1090 Vienna

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history.
The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have –
Otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
(Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart)

Opening 23/11/2012 // 19:00 – 23:00
Welcoming: Caroline Fekete-Kaiser, KulturAXE
In the presence of Niccolò Piccolomini

Exhibition Duration: 24 Nov – 07 Dez 2012
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 10- 17h30
(Tue 10-15h30!) and on appointment

Wine courtesy: www.roncodeitassi.it

With the exhibition STORYTELLERS, KulturAXE is also opening its new location in Vienna 1090: the Studio Gallery WHITE HORSES. In line with the programme of KulturAXE since 1995, there will be presentations of artists and designers of different nations – with a focus on CEE, Ukraine and South Africa.

Wayne Barker (South Africa) and Niccolò Piccolomini (Italy), storytellers of our times, present watercolors in this exhibition – the works of Wayne Barker being rooted in the deep South African texture of memory and history, whereas Piccolomini’s works relate to an European topography, like a travel diary through classical Italy.

Memories want to be told, painted, written, recorded. This is when they deploy their power of healing, this is when the stories create the tissue of our lives. The storytellers are both collectors and creators of memory, in their stories you can see who we are, you can reflect yourself in them like in a mirror. You can enter them, pluck memory fragments to share in your own stories, distribute and disseminate, thus reshaping the present.

Wayne Barker wraps up the past into future memories condensing it all to powerful moments that last for ever,‘as nothing gets lost in the universe’. He allows us into his works, his life and emotions. In this merging of art and life, interwoven with the fabric of the world, we can meet, reconstruct the present and reinvent the future.

Niccolò Piccolomini, as a traveller of the world, absorbs images and scenes, with each gaze producing landscapes of the soul. In his search for peace and serenity in spheres placed at the highest levels, he invites us to be attentive and alert at a moment’s notice.

Watercolors – paintings in one of the oldest techniques of illustrating the world – speak a direct and undisguised language, the language of true storytellers…

SHORT BIOS

WAYNE BARKER, South Africa

www.waynebarker.co.za

“There is always more to Wane Barker that meets the eye, or the heart, for his legacy will be an enduring one, as the best of the best this country has ever produced, reverberating long after his or our time.” (Braam Kruger in Business Day Art, August 2006)
Wayne Barker was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1963. He received his art education at the Pretoria Technikon, the Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Luminy, Marseille. He lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Numerous national and international exhibitions, such as 2009 Languages of the World, collateral exhibition to the Venice Biennale, Pallazzo Querini, Venice, Italy; 1997 and 1995 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennale; Johannesburg Art Fairs 2008-2012, Köln and Frankfurt Art Fairs 1998.

NICCOLÒ PICCOLOMINI, Italy

niccolopiccolomini.com

1949 born in Siena/I. Youth between Rome and the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Working experience in the creative fields of communication: painting, graphic design, cinema, marketing and public relations. Extensive travels and observations of the world. “I always say that I produce landscapes: landscapes of the Soul. I search for peace and serenity in the spheres placed at the highest levels. I wish that we could all be more introspective and attentive being ready at a moment’s notice and be open to all that is new. This is what I dream frequently and instinctively while I paint.”