bloom! Will Gorlitz, Henri Fantin-Latour, Gerhard Richter

January 18, 2004 - March 21, 2004

Singularly Significant Series
Organized by KW|AG in cooperation with the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada
Presented by Tula Foundation

"In lieu of words, I have been given flowers.  A room blooming bright with their velvet chatter.  I could draw a map: the geography of a life, any life, marked by these bold, fragile statements of empathy and tribute."- Camilla Gibb, Guest Writer

The Singularly Significant series showcases concise projects by high profile artists demonstrating significant historical and contemporary trends. Bloom! brought together significant individual contemporary and historical artworks under the unifying genre of flower painting. This unorthodox juxtaposition of 21st Century contemporary artists, Will Gorlitz (Canada), Gerhard Richter (Germany) and 19th Century realist painter Henri Fantin-Latour (France) was intended to create new possibilities for critical examination of formal painting relationships and an opportunity for audience appreciation of these fine individual works.

Will Gorlitz writes: "Just as in the act of painting itself, the historic dimension of the genre offers a potential for re-definition that engages both imagination and theoretical discourse… fluid and blurry, the paintings represent emotional excess as vision which is obscured by tears".

Henri Fantin-Latour belongs to the Manet, Degas, and Cézanne generation of artists, has painted more than eight hundred still life and studies in his lifetime, and was represented by two splendid paintings of roses from 1885 and 1888.

Gerhard Richter is recognized as one of the most important painters of our time. He has produced works of sheer aesthetic splendour with Lilies being a fine example of his trademark blurry, photo figurative paintings. He has been quoted as expressing the sentiment "I believe in beauty" as a tenet underpinning all of his art.