Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. Text Ellen Seifermann.
Berlin-based artist Johannes Kahrs (born 1965) presents Tropical Nights, a collection of 26 recently completed figurative paintings. Kahrs is often inspired by film and photography, and many of his subjects come directly from movies or the artist's own street photography.
Berlin-based Johannes Kahrs paints suggestive, ghostly forms in shifting tones and gradations of grey and black pastel, leaving contours blurred. Detached from their original context, almost unrecognizable representational fragments emerge. With introductory text by Ralph Rugoff, director of London's Hayward Gallery, this volume provides the first comprehensive survey of Kahrs' oeuvre.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Ziba de Weck Ardalan. Text by Ziba de Weck Ardalan, Nicola Suthor.
At first glance, Johannes Kahrs' dramatic paintings and drawings seem to carry forward the clear, everyday truths of snapshots; on closer inspection they become intricate, mysterious, fictional worlds. Kahrs manipulates found imagery from film stills, newspapers and personal photographs and liberates figures from their original contexts into dark, uncanny atmospheres. Through an intense pursuit of detail, he works to transplant into the viewer his own initial fascination with the image for its own sake. On top of all this methodology and maneuvering, he distances the viewer from the works by presenting them behind glass, so that their glazed surfaces throw back light and reflection. Kahrs, born in Bremen in 1961 and currently based in Berlin, has shown widely in Europe, at the Drawing Center and P.S.1 in New York, the Phoenix Art Museum and Miami's Bass Museum of Art.
Johannes Kahrs
Johannes Kahrs: Lonely Long Meaningless Way Home