High Season

Heinz Butz - Antony Cairns - Leelee Chan - Julius Heinemann - Sven Johne - Whitney McVeigh - Diogo Pimentão

7th july - 15th September 2023

Jahn und Jahn and Encounter are delighted to host ‘High Season’ in their Lisbon gallery, a collaborative summer exhibition alongside Klemm’s, from Berlin. Through bringing together works from different generations and contexts, this group show will expand possibilities for dialogue and engender joint narratives between galleries, artists and practices. The gallery’s 19th century architectural typology shapes and guides the multifaceted nature of this exhibition; being both disparate and interconnected, through its network of seven exhibition spaces. Extending the space-sharing model initiated by the host galleries from their launch in 2022, this exhibition includes a total of seven recognized artists. ‘High Season’ will include two artists from each of the three galleries program and one guest Portuguese artist. Fundamental to the concept of the exhibition, is a desire to develop new sites for collaboration and enable possibilities for critical exchange.

 Despite the diversity of practices and ways of seeing represented in ‘High Season’ certain shared themes are present; there are, for instance, ongoing preoccupations with architectural structures, pictorial objects, found materials, psychology and the natural world. Leelee Chan’s (1984, Hong Kong) enigmatic sculptures incorporate urban debris, ancient artifacts, natural materials, industrial and mundane products, generating visual paradoxes in which these objects move seamlessly between past, present and future. In works such as Lucid Formation (Azure) (2022) the artist manipulates and revisions pallets sourced from Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing Container Terminal. Their geometric structures echo so called ‘Manchuria windows’ decorative stained-glass windows found in traditional Chinese architecture since the late 18th century.  Similarly, Antony Cairns (1980, United Kingdom) photographic assemblages on IBM computer punch cards, occupy an ambiguous temporal position, utilizing repurposed archival materials and outmoded technologies to enable a creative exploration of the history of photographic reproduction and the aesthetics of abstraction. Whilst rooted in stills captured in global cities from London to LA, Tokyo to New York, the works from Cairns ‘CTY’ series are not bound to the specificity of the locations but instead begin to bleed into abstract shapes of light.

A collection of Heinz Butz’s (1925-2022, Germany) minimal pictorial-objects created between 1960-93 will form a key installation, their meditative exploration of composition, space and surface form a strong dialogue with contemporary sculptures and paperworks from Julius Heinemann (1984, Germany) and Diogo Pimentão (1973, Portugal). Underlying each of Butz’s pieces is a radical reduction of the composition to elementary phenomena of perception. His objects are ambiguous and subversive and have a fetishistic aura that produces a remarkably strong sensuality.

Diogo Pimentão’s experimental graphite works, such as Convergency (2022) also reflect on medium. They sit in an intriguing space between drawing and sculpture and reflect on issues of volume, body and space. By transforming paper and graphite into sculptures that appear composed of iron or steel, Pimentão not only demonstrates the expansive potential of drawing-based media but opens wider questions about readability, intrinsic structures and their potential collapse. Heinemann also interrogates different perceptions of space and time in his paintings and paperworks. The artist utilises specific visual strategies to deconstruct predetermined knowledge structures. His abstract drawings and paintings in ‘High Season’ focus on developing a new vocabulary, one that allows him confront the instability and the flow of nowness and create works caught in a constant state of becoming.

Concerned with psychological landscapes, bodily trace and the layering of time, Whitney McVeigh’s (1968, USA) evocative paintings, such as Window (2020), reflect on the human condition and form languages with origins in Eastern and Western philosophy.  Over a 30-year period, McVeigh has travelled extensively to carry out her practice and held residencies in Brazil, Mexico, India, China and South Africa, the influences of these formative experiences are channelled into her suggestive marks.

In his intermedial game, alternating between fiction, narration, and documentation, Sven Johne (1976, Germany) approaches wide ranging and highly subjective topics of our time with humor and subversiveness. For this exhibition, he presents Glückliche Orte / Happy Places (2006-2014) an installation of text and images reflecting on the South Pacific island state of Vanuatu and its inhabitants lives.

‘High Season’ will open on 6th July 6-10pm and run until 15th September 2023.

Planning your Visit

Encounter, Rua de Sao Bernardo 15, RC, 1200 823, Estrela, Lisboa

Wednesday - Saturday 2-7pm and by appointment

Participating Galleries

Jahn und Jahn

In 2017, Fred Jahn and Matthias Jahn’s galleries merged to form Jahn und Jahn. After a long collaboration with Heiner Friedrich, Fred Jahn founded Galerie Fred Jahn in Munich in 1978. Since then the focus of his program has been on international contemporary artists such as Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, Per Kirkeby, and Fred Sandback. In 2008, Matthias Jahn opened his own gallery at Baaderstraße in Munich, which initially concentrated on young artists from Günther Förg’s milieu. The gallery later expanded its program to likewise engage with international contemporary art. In 2018, Tim Geissler became a partner at Jahn and Jahn to support the gallery with his knowledge and experience. In 2022, Jahn and Jahn founded a gallery in Lisbon, Portugal. Close collaboration with the artists as well as a thorough understanding of forms of artistic expression have been central to the identity of the galleries from the beginning. Significant here are also the numerous publications, published by the galleries themselves, which have accompanied exhibitions in both locations. Jahn und Jahn intends to continue in this vein. 

Encounter

Encounter was founded by Alexander Caspari in 2014. The gallery curates academically rigorous and immersive exhibitions, working with a core group of leading emerging and established international contemporary artists. In 2022, Encounter launched a new gallery space in Lisbon. The gallery, comprised of seven exhibition rooms, two viewing rooms and a sculpture garden, is located in a large 19th Century apartment on Rua de São Bernardo next to Jardim da Estrela and The British Embassy. Since its inception, Encounter has focused on building dynamic relationships with both new and established collectors, institutions and foundations, who are dedicated to supporting diverse contemporary art practices. Artists’ the gallery represents have been exhibited at and collected by important institutions internationally including; Tate Modern, The British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Royal Academy, The Getty Villa, La MEP, Palais de Tokyo and Kettle’s Yard. In 2017, extending the gallery’s London program, Encounter was appointed to curate the contemporary sculpture program of Smithson Plaza, St James's, building on an important legacy of Post-War and Contemporary sculpture at this iconic architectural site. 

Gomide&Co

For over a decade, Gomide&Co has been present on the national and international art circuit, contributing to the production and insertion of primary and secondary market artists in public and private collections. In its program, while seeking to present works by renowned names in modern and contemporary art, the gallery also works to achieve other perspectives. In the midst these movements of distancing and approximation on diverse artistic productions, dialogues are created, enabling new conceptualizations and narratives. Interweaving different generations and approaches, Gomide&Co presents both established artists and recent artists who are consolidating their institutional and commercial careers. Among them are Lenora de Barros, Marcelo Cipis, Maria Lira Marques, Pedro Caetano, Tiago Mestre, Francisco Brennand, and León Ferrari. In the secondary market, artists such as Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger, Mira Schendel, Antoni Tàpies, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, and Marcel Broodthaers have been shown in anthological exhibitions, reflecting the gallery’s curatorial concern for bringing together historic and fundamental works for the understanding and appreciation of their practices.

From the beginning, Gomide&Co believes in the collaboration with galleries and institutions. In these exchanges, the gallery’s presence has expanded to new places, in addition to its participation in major art fairs and biennials. At the new address on Avenida Paulista, opened in 2023, Gomide&Co continues its commitment to fostering the art scene through dialogue and plurality.

Klemm’s

KLEMM’S was founded in 2007 by Sebastian Klemm and Silvia Bonsiepe as a gallery for conceptual contemporary art. Our roster of artists are linked by their shared interests in the transformation of experienced reality and distinctive critique of contemporary social currents. We support positions and artists who work to overcome limitations in content and form bringing new approaches to the interrogation of their medium. It is important for us to support and accompany the artists through all stages of their development and steadily build their careers in a progressive international context. In conceiving our program, it is essential for us to offer the artists a platform that allows their conceptual approaches to unfold individually and also to reflect upon and enhance each other. Alongside our solo exhibitions of represented artists, we host carte-blanche projects by invited curators, artist-curated exhibitions and regular film screenings or artist talks. In an effort to promote and deepen the critical dialogue about the development of artistic expression, we work closely with the artists to actively document their projects and new work with unique publications and artists’ books.

Artist Information

Heinz Butz (Dillingen 1925 – Munich 2022, DE) lived and worked in Munich between 1950 and 2022. After his return from Russian captivity in 1946, he began studying at the art school in Augsburg in 1948. In 1950 he switched to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. From 1954 he taught at the art school in Augsburg and then at the school of applied arts there. From the mid-1950s, Butz developed independent abstract compositions followed by experimental images and moved towards sculptural shapes in the 1960s. The starting point of all his work is drawing. From 1967 to 1991 he held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Between 1984 and 2015, ten solo exhibitions took place at Galerie Fred Jahn in Munich, followed by two solo exhibitions dedicated to the artist by Jahn und Jahn Munich in 2019 and 2022. Butz died in Munich, on August 8, 2022 at the age of 96. Butz’s formal vocabulary ranges from classic abstract-geometric lines and seemingly technical modular formations to softly contoured manifestations. The latters’ origins in nature are apparent and frequently derived from the human body. Some of his “pictorial objects” consist of several, often small, chipboard elements held together with rope, thus becoming organic, movable constructions. Each of these objects is characterized by a radical reduction of the composition to elementary phenomena of perception. Their colour tones, sometimes muted, sometimes powerful, are always precisely attuned to the composition, to the size of an object and its outline. His objects are full of force and delicate at the same time, to some extent ambiguous and erotic, with a certain aura that generates a remarkably strong sensuality. In their simplicity and silence, they nevertheless withdraw from everyday life and assert themselves as pure phenomena.

Antony Cairns (1980, London) works across photography, installation and sculpture. Preoccupied with the material process of photography and its intrinsic interplay with technology, at the root of Cairns’ practice is the fusing of advanced means of image reproduction with traditional processes. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘PXL City,’ The Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris (2023), ‘PXL CTY’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2023), ‘CTY 5081’, Encounter, Lisbon (2022, ‘CTY_TYO3 TYO4’, Webber, London (2021), ‘TY03TY04’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2021), ‘CTY-TY03’, Stieglitz 19, Antwerp (2020), ‘Touchstone’, The Photographers Gallery, London (2019), ‘CTY’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2019), ‘The Tale of Gordon Earl Adams’, Theatre de Verdure, Switzerland (2018), ‘TYO2-LDN4’, Roman Road, London (2017). Selected group exhibitions include ‘New Acquisitions’, Photography Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2023), ‘What Remains’ Encounter, London (2021), ‘Expired’ Sara Kay Gallery, New York (2019), ‘Artificial Impressions’, Stedelijk Museum Breda (2018), ‘Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art’, Tate Modern, London (2018), ‘London Nights’, Museum of London, London (2018), ‘A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age’, George Eastman Museum, New York (2016), ‘Abstracts’, Copperfield, London (2015), ‘Memory Lab – Photography Challenges History’, Mudam, Luxembourg (2015), ‘Collected Shadows’ Polygon Gallery, Vancouver (2013), ‘ICP Triennial’ International Centre for Photography, New York (2013). In 2015 Cairns won the prestigious Hariban Award. His work can be found in important public and private collections internationally including The Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, V&A, George Eastman Museum, Archive of Modern Conflict and Tate Library.

Leelee Chan (1984, Hong Kong) received her MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design(RISD) in 2009 and her BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. She currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Her work was exhibited internationally including para-site, Hong Kong, CN; Klemm‘s, Berlin, DE; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, CN; Skulpturen Park Cologne, DE;UCCA Dune Art Museum, Qinhuangdao, CN; Capsule Shanghai, CN; Downs & Ross, New York, USA; Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, CN; Mine Project, Hong Kong, CN; Neptune, Hong Kong, CN; Artemis Project Space, York, UK; The Dorado Project, New Jersey, USA; Flux Factory, New York, USA; Parallel Art Space, New York, USA; Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, USA. Her work is featured in the collection of M+ Museum, Hong Kong, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Hong Kong and Skulpturen Park Köln, Germany. She is the ninth winner of the BMW Art Journey, during which she explored the possibilities of ancient and future materials by engaging in dialogues with craftspeople, innovators, and scientists. She is currently on view with new sculptures at 13 Yves Saint Laurent flagship stores worldwide and later be part of the YSL art collection

Ofra Grinfeder (Israel, 1945), was born in Petach Tikva moved to New York, lived for years in Korea, Turkey, and then settled in Brazil. This displacement made her accumulate elements from each culture she was inserted, finding a synthesis of these influences, materials, and territories. Her poetics, which at times flirts with the primitive, at a second glance also shows us the use of minimalist techniques, which refer to her time in East Asia. This range of expressions shows a latent restlessness in a career that already spans more than five decades. Coming from a traumatic moment in the history of her native country, Ofra presents herself as an artist who seeks itinerancy among the apprenticeships she has had with artisans from the four corners of the world. Her work is dynamic and crosses several languages, including, besides ceramics, sculptures, jewelry, paintings, drawings, and collages. Of her individual and group exhibitions, the most noteworthy are Images from Korea, at the American Cultural Center (Seoul/South Korea, 1969); Raku, at the 9th Bunkyo Hall (São Paulo, 1980); a group show at the Salon Objet d'Art (Paris, France, 1982); France-Brazil, with Jaques Buchholtz, at the MAM (São Paulo, 1988); Clay, at the Toki Art Gallery (São Paulo, 1987); Paper Works, at the Galeria Nara Roesler (São Paulo, 1987); Cast Jewelry, at Galeria Ornamentum (São Paulo, 1987); Ceramics, at Galeria Sarver (Paris, France, 1985); Wood and Paper, at Galeria NEV (Istanbul, Turkey, 1992); Jewelry, at Aaron Faber Gallery (NYC, USA, 1997); Imaginary Forest, at Instituto Cultural Villa Maurina (Rio de Janeiro, 1998); Sculptures in Metal, at Museu da Casa Brasileira (São Paulo, 2003), among others.

Julius Heinemann (1984 Munich) lives and works in Berlin. Julius Heinemann's practice is based on the study of the different layers of perception, understood as a key for the relationship between the subject and the other – an "other" that can also be called reality, society, world, etc. Heinemann analyses how perception forms "images" –fragments of continuously updated information from the outside– with which we can deal with concepts such as time and space, crucial for the articulation of these sensory relations.Through all his body of work, Heinemann formally researches the preconceived ways to interpret abstract values such as scale, colour, shape, and light in order to redefine strategies to understand, from a subjective position, our relationship with what surrounds us. This approach results in the creation of new models that create an archive of personal images. His drawings, paintings, installations, books, and other media the artist works with, as well the collaborations with other artists, focus on developing a new vocabulary, that allows him to face up to the instability and the flow of nowness; this constant state of becoming, grasping other temporal and spatial structures. Therefore, his works become the basis for a research on how to think out of normative ideas in all fields of knowledge; ideas which reverberate in the conception of history, science or politics. This continued attitude of questioning what we see in physical terms, is contemplated as a tool for thinking and feeling, and as an alternative way of imagining the possibilities of a collectivity derived from individual perceptions.

Sven Johne (b.Bergen on Rügen Island, former East Germany, 1976) lives and works in Berlin. His works playfully act on the accustomed manner of representation and readability. By combining takings of spheric simplicity with sober and report-like narratives he implements fictional elements in his works, taking their meaning beyond the purely documentary.  His work has recently been shown at a.o. : 12th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, DE; Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, v Hiroshima, JP; Pinakothek der Moderne, München, DE; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Berlin, DE; Arbeiterkammer, Wien, AT; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE; Triennial of Photography Hamburg andat the Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg, DE; Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Riga, LVA; Karachi Biennale, Karachi, PAK; Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, GRC; Pochen Biennale, Wirkbau, Chemnitz, DE, Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie–Farewell Photography“, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg, DE; mumok, Vienna, AT (2017). His work is held in the public collections of a.o. Museum Folkwang, Essen, DE; DZ Kunstsammlung, Frankfurta.M., DE;EMST, Athens, GR; Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; Pinakothek der Moderne, München, DE; Sprengel Museum, Hannover, DE; Philara Collection, Düsseldorf, DE; Zabludowizc Collection, London, UK.

Maria Lira Marques (Brazil, 1945) lives and works in Araçuaí, Brazil. Maria Lira Marques developed her interest in ceramics and several handicrafts when she was a child watching her mother, Odília Borges Nogueira, building nativity scenes in raw clay. She is part of a long and fruitful line of artists from Vale do Jequitinhonha, Minas Gerais. Maria Lira held her first exhibition in 1975 at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, and, since then, has exhibited in several national and international institutions in Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, France, and the United States. Her work is characterized by the integration of a graphic language derived from natural pigments with the backlands landscape. Since the 1990s, she has dedicated herself to the body of work known as Bichos do Sertão, paintings of imaginary animals that make up a vast formal bestiary. In more than 40 years as an artist, Maria Lira has also positioned herself as a researcher, activist, and disseminator of artists and artisans from the Vale do Jequitinhonha, over which she developed a long work in collaboration with Friar Xico, a Dutch friar living in Brazil. With him, she also led the Coral Trovadores do Vale, whose repertoire was formed by the region's songbook. In 2010, they founded the Museum of Araçuaí, created with the objective of housing a collection of objects and documents that record the religiosity, customs, and crafts that make up the history of Araçuaí. Her work has been studied by researcher Lélia Coelho Frota, one of the main authorities on Brazilian popular art, and, in 2007, her trajectory was honored in a play with her name directed by João das Neves. She also held exhibitions at the Programa Sala do Artista Popular and Museu Casa do Pontal, in Rio de Janeiro, and Centro de Arte Popular, in Belo Horizonte. In 2021, she held the exhibition Maria Lira Marques: Recent works at Bergamin & Gomide, now Gomide&Co.

Whitney McVeigh (New York, 1968) is an American visual artist and writer, best known for her paintings and installation art. She has travelled extensively to carry out her practice and held residencies in Brazil, Mexico, India, China and South Africa. Her work investigates personal and collective memory and alludes to the layering of time. Her paintings are preoccupied with the complexity and dual layers of the body and explore languages with origins in Eastern and Western philosophy. Over a twenty-year period the artist has amassed a collection of objects in the studio weighted by their unique patternations; tracing former lives and the once tangible relationship an individual may have had with the object. Whitney McVeigh was featured in the BBC4 television documentary, Where is Modern Art Now (2009). She was nominated for the Sovereign European Art Prize (2008) by Saatchi Gallery director, Rebecca Wilson. Simon Schama’s recent essay on McVeigh’s practice ‘The Happenstance of Illumination’(2018) was included in his book Wordy (Simon & Schuster), published in June 2019. Her work featured in ‘Imagined Spaces’ edited by Kirsty Gunn & Gail Low with Voyage Out Press & Saraband Books (2020), an anthology that creates a “space” between understanding and the imagination. Selected recent solo exhibitions include; ‘Temporality, Cardi Projects, Cardi Gallery (2020), What is Worthwhile Doing in this World, Mount Stuart Visual Arts, Scotland (2019), Elegy to Nature, Eykyn Maclean, New York (2018), Language of Memory, Summerhall Arts, Edinburgh (2016), Contours, Hazard Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2015), Inventory: Invisible Companion, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2015), New Work, Michael Goedhuis, London (2015) and presentation of the film ‘Birth’: Origins at the end of life at the Royal Academy, London (2015). Selected recent group exhibitions include, ‘Re-Naissance, Unit London, online (2023), Fermata, Encounter, London (2021), Photo London, Somerset House, London (2021) with Encounter, What Remains, Encounter, London (2021), Artist Rooms, Encounter, London (2020), ‘Shapes in Clouds’ Encounter, London (2019), Plato in LA: Contemporary Artists’ Visions, Getty Villa, Los Angeles (2018), Not a Single Story, The Wanas Konst Foundation, Sweden with Nirox Foundation, South Africa (2018), Culture Lines: Sans Frontieres, Metamatic-Taf Foundation, Athens (2016), Unlocking the Diary, The Archiving of Nameless Memories, Folkestone Triennial, Kent (2014) and Glass Stress, White Light/White Heat, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013).

Diogo Pimentão (Lisbon, 1973) lives and works in London. He studied art at Ar.Co., Lisbon; the Sculpture Seminar, Gotland, and the Centro Internacional de Escultura Pêro Pinheiro in Portugal. The practice of drawing, especially solid graphite, is the central axis of his work: he conceives it as a form of contact between a matter and a support through a repetitive gesture, sometimes blind or protocolary. His research associates the random with a mastered technique, through the trail and the marks, the line or the trace. The sheet can be folded, buried in supports, or placed on the ground so as to acquire movement. Among his most salient solo exhibitions are those held in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), Museu de Arte Contemporânea – Coleção António Cachola, Elvas Rios Foundation (Lisbon), Kentkler International Drawing Space (Brooklyn), as well as in international galleries such as Cristina Guerra in Lisbon. His work has featured in group exhibitions, among them: the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou (Paris), Calouste Goulbenkian Museum (Lisbon), Fundaçao Serralves (Porto), Centre d’Art La Panacée (Montpellier), CAPC, (Bordeaux).His work is present in European art centres and institutions and in important private collections both in Europe and in the United States, including the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (Paris), Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou (Paris), Pomeranz Collection (Vienna), Collection Lambert (Avignon), European Central Bank, Fundaçao Serralves (Porto), Museu de Arte Contemporânea – Colecção António Cachola, Elvas Rios Foundation (Lisbon), Fundaçao EDP (Lisbon), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), MONA, Museum of Old and New Art (Australia).