Varda Caivano, Tomasz Kowalski, Bernhard Martin, Irina Nakhova

What is a picture? What do we perceive in our surroundings, how do we create an image in our mind and how can we visualise this in a painting? The Summer Academy offers four different courses, which deal with these and further questions, concentrating primarily on painting.

Varda Caivano will examine in her course Painting lab – painting enquiry three core issues: The position of the artist, the world of the image, and the critical view. Participants in Tomasz Kowalski’s course Relativity Express: painting as a stage for inner self will learn how to use painting techniques as a tool for inner exploration, or as a platform for confronting the inner self with others. The course What is a picture? directed by Bernhard Martin is intended for artists who wish to explore and explain their pictorial vocabulary and their manner of viewing images, and who want to achieve the technical ability to render a concept intuitively. The main subject of investigation in Irina Nakhova’s course The nude: interpretation in painting is the human figure. Through working with life models, participants will understand that observational skills are basic to any artwork, including abstraction.

Varda Caivano, Untitled, 2015. Acrylic, charcoal and oil on canvas, 120 x 180 cm. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London. Photo: Angus Mill.

This Sunday, February 22, Varda Caivano’s first solo presentation in the United States, titled The density of the actions, will open at The Renaissance Society in Chicago. During the opening reception, she will discuss her practice and the new works in conversation with the curator Solveig Øvstebø.

Tomasz Kowalski, Bez tytulu, 2015, acrylic, spray on canvas, 160 x 130 cm

Kowalski’s works are currently on view in group shows at Tim van Laere Gallery in Antwerp (until 7 March), at Carlier | Gebauer in Berlin (until 14 March) and at Boccanera Gallery in Milan (until 31 March). On 21 March, his solo exhibition Planck Time will open at Carlier | Gebauer in Berlin.

Bernhard Martin, Gähnen und applaudieren im Orchestergraben [Yawns and applause in the orchestra pit], 2013, oil on raw canvas, 170 × 190 cm

In celebration of the Fred Thieler Prize for painting 2015, a major solo show with Bernhard Martin will open at Berlinische Galerie on 29 May.

Irina Nakhova, Senses: Apples, dyptich, 2010, oil on canvas, 78 x 78 cm each

The exhibition Post pop: east meets west, including works by Irina Nakhova, is still on view until 3 March at Saatchi Gallery in London. There is an interesting review of this exhibition in the German newspaper Der Freitag (only in German), also pointing on the political difficulties Nakhova has to face regarding her presentation in the Russian Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia 2015.