Eberhard Havekost (*1967) has been considered one of the most respected German artists worldwide for several years. What is it that makes the images of the Dresden-based artist so disquieting, so ambiguous? Photographic perspectives with large-format brushwork, and controlled distortion with a sense of precise sectioning are part of it. Yet most of all, it is a sort of impenetrability, which continually forces the gaze used to viewing painting-the lingering gaze-to slip and slide over the surfaces of faces, emotions, and buildings. Havekost often appropriates media images from television and newspapers in his paintings, and, most recently, also adapts motifs from his own photographs. However, unlike Gerhard Richter, Havekost is not involved in a painter's skeptical attempt to increase the value of the photographic subject, but with media's skeptical way of dealing with the photograph as a document.
The publication is the first one to collect Eberhard Havekost's paintings from the last seven years, whose central themes are the figure and housing, windows and façades, and "leisure-time vehicles."

Exhibition schedule: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, November 5, 2005-February 19, 2006· Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam, March 9-May 29, 2006

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