art.wikisort.org - Artist

Rita Ackermann (born April 19, 1968) is a Hungarian-American artist. She is currently living and working in New York City.

This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. (November 2022)

Rita Ackermann
Born	Bakos Rita (1968-04-19) April 19, 1968 (age 54) Budapest, Hungary
Education	University of Fine Arts Budapest New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture
Known for	Painting
Notable work	Get A Job, Movements As Monuments, Mama Paintings
Movement	Abstract Expressionism

Early life and education

This section does not cite any sources. (November 2022)

Rita Ackermann was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1968. Ackermann trained at the University of Fine Arts Budapest from 1989 until 1992. It was there that aesthetics professor Péter György introduced her to Paul Virilio’s books, whose theories and concepts have continued to influence Ackermann’s ideas and serve as inspirational references. Ackermann was taught by Hungarian painter Karoly Klimo, who encouraged her abstract-expressionist and “brut” modes of painting.

In 1992, Ackermann left the academy to study in New York with the help of the Hanes Family Foundation at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. Ackermann left the school after one semester, as she found the teaching too conservative. She instead decided to immerse herself in and learn directly from the artists in New York's Lower East Side.

Upon arriving in New York, the artist, who was originally “Rita Bakos,” changed her name to “Rita Ackermann,” her grandmother's maiden name.

Career

Ackermann's career has spanned over three decades and an array of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, fashion design, performance, as well as other mediums. She has been the subject of and featured in multiple institutional and gallery solo and group exhibitions across the world, and her work is held in prominent public collections, including Dallas Museum of Art, Museum het Domein, Sittard/NE, MoCA, North Miami, MoCA, Los Angeles, MoMA, New York, SFMoMA, San Francisco, The Zabludowicz Collection, London/UK, and others.

1990s - 2010

Within just a few months of settling into the downtown scene, Ackermann received widespread attention for her artworks and collaborative projects. In 1992, after leaving the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Ackermann was working as a waitress while painting in her studio space on 42nd Street in New York City.[1] When Ackermann arrived in New York in the early 1990s, she was immersed within the culture of raves and zines, as well as the ensuing collaborations between artists, musicians, and writers. Among some of Ackermann's first well-known collaborations include her designs for a mural for the legendary rave store Liquid Sky, the windows curated by Marcia Tucker for the New Museum and the Lower East Side's famed Max Fish Bar, and an album cover for Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.[2]

Early Paintings

Ackermann's earliest paintings are drawn from her earliest form memories of art in the form of children's books and fairytales, such as Der Struwwelpeter (1845) by Heinrich Hoffmann. Other important sources for these early large scale canvases include the German coming-of-age film Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (directed Uri Edel, 1981), the American documentary Streetwise (by Martin Bell, 1984), and Jean Cocteau’s book Les Enfants terribles (1929). Her visual influences also ranged from, Paul Gauguin, to German Expressionism, gestural abstraction (particularly Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning), Surrealism, and Pop art.

It was in 1994 that she received recognition from her first solo show with Andrea Rosen Gallery, After Dinner I’m Gonna Shoot You But Before I’ll Take a Shower. The works in the exhibition featured Ackermann’s large oil paintings depicting young female figures drawn from many sources. The paintings were derived from her earlier drawings that were subsequently transferred onto canvas. In doing so, she applied abstract gestural elements directly with her hands over the drawn lines. To Ackermann, these figures do not represent her own, nor a universal, adolescent girlhood. Rather, as she has remarked, “they are all independent and free. They need nothing from anybody, therefore they are above everybody. Their existence is counter-cultural...They are raw and perfect in their bubble existence, outside the time and space of their society.”[3]

The Ballpoint Drawings

After the first period of figurative paintings made from 1993 to 1996, Ackerman turned to painting images of her brother, shown in her second solo exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery in 1996. She then turned to developing multilayered photo collages from webs of ballpoint pen doodles, which can be seen in The Ugly Painting, 1996–1997. The imagery for these drawings was based on collages she made as studies, drawing automatically and expressively.[4] Ackermann was working on these ballpoint drawings until she moved to Texas in 1999. Ackermann lived in suburban Corpus Christi, Texas from 1999 to 2001 with her husband at the time, musician, David Nuss.

In 1999 Ackermann founded the band Angelblood together with Lizzi Bougatsos and Jess Holzworth. Between 1999 and 2004 Angelblood produced four albums and performed numerous live shows in New York and across Europe.

Collage Works

Ackermann returned to New York in 2001, where her practice was centered based in painting, collage and performance. For the artist, the possibilities in the medium of collage are limitless. As she has said, “Everything can be matched up, glued together, torn apart, and fixed.”[5] In 2005, Andrea Rosen Gallery mounted a solo exhibition of Ackermann's collage works, entitled 'Collage 1993 – 2005’. Reviewing this exhibition for The New York Times, Roberta Smith described the collage works thus: “Ms. Ackermann is equally at home with scissors or ballpoint pen; with finely rendered figures and poetic phrases or words and images clipped from newspapers and magazines; and with clogged compositions or spare ones. Women–as victors, victims or silent witnesses–appear in all situations.”

Plexiglass Works

From 2006 to 2008, Ackermann worked on a series of collages resulting in transparent Plexiglas works where loose material was compressed between two vertical sheets of Plexiglas.

In 2008, Ackermann was invited to participate in the Whitney Biennial, with the series where she exhibited Black Out, 2007.

In 2009, Ackermann spent several months in Marfa, Texas at the Chinati Foundation's artist-in-residence program, where she focused on the abstract conceptual elements of her work. During her stay, she was working in the former studio of Donald Judd in the Texas desert. Her series, MARFA / CRASH, emerged from her time at the Chinati Foundation. “Crash” is inspired by Paul Virilio's The Original Accident. Ackermann has noted, “After these catastrophes, you find purity and a moment of silence that is the highest harmony and peace.”[6] Ackermann's work from this series was presented in two exhibitions eponymous to the series: The Chinati Foundation and Galerie Peter Kilchmann in Zurich. The works also culminated in an artistic publication titled, Marfa/Crash. Parking Accidents, published by Nieves, an independent publishing house in Zürich.[7]

2010 to present

Ackermann received her first major survey exhibition in 2011, at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest. The exhibition's title, “BAKOS,” is also the artist's family name. The exhibition presented her recent paintings, especially her now well-known Fire by Days series, a highly distilled collection of images based on two colours and a single composition. This series was also exhibited with Hauser & Wirth in London in 2012, Ackermann's first presentation with the gallery after joining their roster. ‘Fire by Days’, a title inspired by French poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte’s ‘Vacancy in Glass’, began as an accidental spill of paint on the artist's studio floor, which Ackermann mopped up using a Hungarian fire safety poster.[8] Of these paintings, Ackermann has said: “These paintings came to me from, or as, an accident: suddenly the forms and shapes of hastily cleaning up a mess of paint on a surface suggested something that wasn’t a figure or a face, but rather both, or abstract. This is how the first ‘Fire by Days’ images arose. I had no intention to make this picture. It was an accident.”[9]

In 2012, Ackermann was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, curated by Bonnie Clearwater. The exhibition featured paintings, drawings, and collages from 1993 to 2012. It also featured a collaboration between Ackermann and filmmaker Harmony Korine, exhibiting, at the time, Ackermann’s most abstract paintings to date, called The “Backwards Paintings.” Ackermann's second monograph, eponymously titled, Rita Ackermann, was published by Skira Rizzoli, to accompany the exhibition. The publication features essays by Bonnie Clearwater, Harmony Korine, John Kelsey, Felix Ensslin and Josh Smith.

Ackermann's work was included in the 2022 exhibition Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.[10]

The Chalkboard Paintings

It was during this period, as exemplified in the Fire by Days series, that Ackermann began working with spray paint on canvas, and continued this mode for the subsequent years. After which, she turned to chalkboard as an alternative way of painting. Ackermann's works realized for her solo exhibition at the Sammlung Friedrichshof in Burgenland, Austria, “Meditation on Violence,” were created in dialogue with works of Viennese Actionism. The exhibition took place at Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum, Vienna, Austria. For Ackermann, the central connection to the Actionist works is primarily the movement by which the images appear and dissolve. Ackermann also proceeds with gestural techniques in her video works by moving the cursor over found footage from the Internet. Her subtle visual language thus takes the theme of power in the media of painting, drawing, video, photography, and performance, revealing itself to the observer's gaze, and subsequently removing it.[11] Ackermann's earliest works, created between 1993 and 1996, such as Get a Job, 1993, were the point of departure for the body of work in this exhibition. The figures in these early paintings are classically composed in idyllic scenes that convey serenity after a violent act. In the chalkboard paintings, the figures from Ackermann's early works are the foundation for the chalkboard drawings on the surface of the paintings. The more these chalk drawings are erased, the more visible they become, resulting in a state of flux.[12]

This body of work was collectively titled The Chalkboard Paintings. These works were presented together in a solo exhibition at Malmö Konsthall in 2016, and examined the relationship Ackermann's earliest and most recent body of work, created more than two decades apart. In doing so, the viewer was invited to experience the multiplicity of layers, textures, and dichotomies of meanings in the artist's work. Her large paintings of “nymphet-ish” girls depicted with lines evoking both beauty and ugliness, which had brought Ackermann widespread acclaim in the 90s, can be seen as the point of departure for The Chalkboard Paintings. Ackermann described the process of creating her chalkboard paintings: “These works are made by multiple erasures. What happens through the making is exactly what happens on a chalkboard in a classroom. A configuration or drawing is rendered on the black or green board; then it gets cleaned up for the next class. Since I apply the chalkboard paint on the canvases first, they must be stretched on the wall. The erasures are forceful and physical. I discovered that sometimes the more manic the erasure is, the more visible the drawing becomes underneath the layers of washed-­away chalk dust. A considerably “un­noble” material's fragility and modesty – the chalk – turns out to be the greatest resistance.”[13]

Perhaps the most comprehensive presentation of Ackermann's highly compelling works from her chalkboard painting series was presented for La Triennale di Milano in 2018, curated by Gianni Jetzer. The exhibition included several multi-part installations such as 'Aesthetic of Disappearance' (2014) and 'Meditation on Violence' (2014).[14]

Mama Series

In 2019, Ackermann exhibited her most recent body of work, the Mama series, at Hauser & Wirth New York, titled Mama '19. Her subsequent two exhibitions presented continuations of the series, Mama '20 at Hauser & Wirth Zürich, and Mama '21 at Hauser & Wirth Monaco. The paintings on canvas reveal her persisting interrogation of line, colour and form. The suite of Mama paintings are rife with repeated imagery, often combined with vivid swathes of colour, giving the paintings an enigmatic visual component that oscillates between abstraction and figuration.

Personal life

Ackermann lives in New York with her husband, artist Daniel Turner and daughter, Marika Thunder.

Selected monographs, publications & artist's books

• 2021, Jetzer, Gianni, Korine, Harmony, Griffin, Scott, 'Rita Ackermann: Mama', Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2021
• 2021, Ackermann, Rita, ‘Sketchbook II (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)’, New York: American Art Catalogues, 2021 (Edition of 500)
• 2021, Ackermann, Rita, ‘Sketchbook I (For Mama)’, New York: American Art Catalogues, 2021 (Edition of 500)
• 2019, Ackermann, Rita, ‘Brother and Sister’, New York: American Art Catalogues, 2021 (Edition of 200)
• 2018, Ackermann, Rita, 'The Coronation & Massacre of Love', New York: American Art Catalogues, 2018
• 2018, 'Jezebels', Rita Ackermann with Jeffrey Gunthaner, Emanuele Coccia + [et al.], Chicago: Drag City Incorporated, 2018
• 2011, 'Rita Ackermann and Harmony Korine. Shadow Fux', Rita Ackermann with Harmony Korine, New York: Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, 2011
• 2011, Clearwater, Bonnie, Enssln, Feliz (et al.), 'Rita Ackermann', New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2011
• 2009, 'Marfa/Crash. Parking Accidents', Rita Ackermann for THE international, Issue 7, Zurich: Nieves, 2009
• 2008, 'Under Pressure from 2006 to 2007', Rita Ackermann, Theodore Fivel (ed.), Zurich: Nieves, 2008
• 2002, 'Snowfall in August', Sittard, Germany: Museum Het Domain, 2002
• 1997, Ohrui, Makato (ed.), 'Rita Ackermann. Keep my mouth shut and no headaches... Works 1996-1993', New York: Andrew Rosen Gallery, Tokyo: rockin' on inc., 1997

Public Collections

• Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas/TX[15]
• Denver Art Museum, Denver/CO
• Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
• Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
• Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul
• Long Museum, Shanghai
• Museum Hedendaagse Kunst De Domijnen, Sittard, Netherlands
• Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami/FL[16]
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/CA[17]
• Museum of Modern Art, New York/NY[18]
• Roberts Institute of Art, London
• Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham MA
• Sammlung Hauser & Wirth, Henau, Switzerland
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• The Somlói-Spengler Collection, Budapest
• Ståhl Collection, Norrköping, Sweden
• The Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom

Selected Interviews & Writings

• Gean Moreno, Rita Ackermann and the Traumas of War, in: ART PAPERS, Atlanta, Georgia, Jul - Aug 2012, Issue 36.04, pp. 28 – 33
• Ross Simonini, Rita Ackermann: Great Art is Gratitude, in: ArtReview, September 2022
• Rita Ackermann by Josh Smith - BOMB Magazine
• Rita Ackermann at Andrea Rosen, Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Vincent Katz
• Teenarama: Rita Ackermann by Peter Schjeldahl, artnet.com
• Rita Ackermann Interview, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art
• Keith Seward, Rita Ackermann. ANDREA ROSEN GALLERY/NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 1994, In: ArtForum, November 1994, Vol. 33, No. 3
• John Kelsey, 'To Be The Knife: Notes on Rita Ackermann,' in: Rita Ackermann, Published New York: SKIRA RIZZOLI, 2011

Artistic collaborations

Music and performance

In 1997, Ackermann produced The Deer Slayer, the shadow-puppet theater. With live narration by Kim Gordon and music by members of the No Neck Blues Band, the show—combining painting and performance, improvised sound plus changing backdrops and the illuminated figures that moved across them—seemed to be making up a strange new language on the spot.[19]

Angelblood was a New York-based band and art collective formed in 2000 by Ackermann, Jess Holzworth and Liz Bougatsos. The collective created collaborative artworks, distinguished by a combination of distinctive drawing and edgy collage. In all of its various incarnations, Angelblood was characterized by a “raw almost desperate approach to art and life...They consciously abandon order and choose to enter the labyrinth of today's life and experience.”[20] In their music as well as in their performances they are concerned with dark motifs and ritualized actions. The group has played internationally in both music and art venues, and have released over three CDs. Labia Minora, produced in 2003, is one of their most well known CDs, featuring Bougatsos (vocals), Ackermann (vocals), Brian DeGraw (bass), Dave Nuss (drums) and Anders Nilssen (guitar).

Curation

Ackermann curated “The Perfect Man Show,” at White Columns in New York City in 2007. Bringing together a mercurial and cross-generational group of (predominantly) female artists, Ackermann invited the artists to respond and/or react to the show's somewhat title and theme. “The Perfect Man Show” took as its starting point a poem written by an American housewife that was originally published in a truck driver's magazine. The poem was subsequently juxtaposed by Ackermann with a 1980s photographic portrait of the celebrated photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern (an image that appears on the exhibition's poster.). The artists in the exhibition included: Emily Sundblad, Lizzi Bougatsos, Carol Rama, Agathe Snow, Genesis P-Orridge and Klara Linden, among others.

“The Perfect Man Show” was followed by its second iteration at White Columns in 2011, Perfect Man II, curated by Ackermann and creative director Parinaz Mogadassi. This exhibition featured instead mostly male artists, including Richard Serra, Antonine Artaud, Daniel Turner, Ken Okiishi, Ed Paschke, Rammellzee, Josh Smith, Dan Graham, Malcolm Morley, and the Bernadette Corporation, among others—a collection of thirty-four multimedia pieces: paintings, installations, sculptures, video art, and photography.[21]

Visual arts

In 2010, Ackermann collaborated with director Harmony Korine, creating works for their exhibition, Shadow Fux, at the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art in New York. The exhibition featured large-scale works on vinyl and canvas. Ackermann and Korine made collages, paintings, and drawn over stills from Korine's 2009 film, Trash Humpers, using the film's freakish, eerie characters as a narrative starting point. The exhibition was accompanied by a corresponding catalogue, with contributions by Richard Flood, Antoine Catala, Gianni Jetzer, Piper Marshall, Cameron Shaw, Rita Ackermann and Korine.[22]

Fashion

In 2019, Ackermann worked with Supreme for their Fall/Winter 2019 season. Supreme used an image from her Heroines 2 artwork, which was created in 2014.[23]

Ackermann collaborated with Natacha Ramsay-Levi, Chloé’s creative director, for Chloé’s autumn/winter 2020 collection, shown in Paris in February 2020. Named after one of Ackermann's works, If You Listen Carefully... I'll Show You How To Dance (1995), the presentation was set among ornate gilded columns by the sculptor Marion Verboom, while a spoken-word soundtrack voiced by Marianne Faithfull filled the room. The clothes, typical to Chloé’s feminine, ’70s-inspired mood, were punctuated with the lithe, female forms that frequent Ackermann's works.[24]

References

На других языках

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[de] Rita Ackermann

Rita Ackermann (* 19. April 1968 in Budapest) ist eine ungarisch-amerikanische Künstlerin.[1][2]

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- [en] Rita Ackermann

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[ru] Аккерман, Рита

Рита Аккерман (англ. Rita Ackermann; род. 19 апреля, 1968 года, Будапешт, Венгрия) — американо-венгерская художница. В настоящее время работает в Нью-Йорке.

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