No promises – No demands
Love is a battlefield
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We are delighted to open the exhibition „No Promises, No Demands“ at VAN HORN with works by Muntean/Rosenblum, Paloma Varga Weisz and Tobias Zielony, artists I have admired for many years.

It always starts with art, with works, with exhibitions and unexpected encounters, sometimes over many years. Slowly an inner picture forms, an idea of how an exhibition could come together. Images appear on the inner canvas and disappear again, others appear and remain. Only then does the question of a „theme“ arise, a commonality in the form and note of the respective uniqueness. Independent works meet in the exhibition, each holding its own place and yet in their encounter a common whisper emerges, a new path, a different story.

Daniela Steinfeld, October 2023

The conceptual figurative paintings by MUNTEAN/ROSENBLUM (both *1962) offer a profound examination of the image of youth and the history of painting beyond gender and generation. They became known for their complex images of young people, which combine classical, figurative painting with text inscriptions. Their paintings address a state of the contemporary world in which all forms of secure identity are slipping away and the ambiguous, unspecific settings create an atmosphere of universality. They reinterpret the vulnerability of human life in the realization of their motifs and subject the legibility of the world and the discomfort of culture to analysis with stylistic directness. Works by the artist duo can be found in the collections of MoMA New York and the Albertina in Vienna, among others. 

The anthropomorphic figures of the sculptor PALOMA VARGA WEISZ (*1966) bear witness to childlike imagination and fantasy. The artist draws on an inner archive of collected impressions and memories of things, images and objects. Her sculptural work is imbued with a sense of rapture and tranquillity and is characterized by its precise implementation and its ability to evoke emotions, stimulate reflection and transcend time and place. Her exploration of themes such as mythology, memory and identity makes her a notable figure in the contemporary art world, with works in the collections of the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht and MomA New York, among others. 

TOBIAS ZIELONY’s (*1973) figurative photographic works show marginalized young people in public spaces. His documentary-style images provide an unadulterated and unfiltered insight into the lives of young people. Zielony explores the social, cultural and political dimensions that shape young people’s lives and sheds light on their struggles, aspirations and the dynamics of their environment. His focus here is, among other things, on the compositional aspect: youthful posing as part of their everyday lives, imitated gestures of nonchalance, superiority or disinterest are motifs that run through his work. Zielony was represented in the German Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and has had solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, among others.