presented by Asher Edelman

Mad Man?

Spook-a-rama, a series of eerie, darkly comic works by the Berlin-based artist, Christopher Winter, opens at Edelman Arts on October 30 with a séance. Intended to summon the spirit of Hans Holbein the Younger, the concept is unorthodox but hardly unheard of. As Winter explains: “Victor Hugo used a method called Turning Tables to talk to spirits. These conversations with writers and poets who also drew for him inspired my own Holbein Table.”

Should such spirits choose to speak and/or actually to draw for Winter and his audience remains to be seen. But the séance sets a spectacular stage for one of Edelman’s most intriguing full-house installations. Named in honor of the former Ghost Train in Coney Island and featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture, and video, viewers are invited to hover over a gruesomely Germanic abyss: an abyss defined by hallucinatory landscapes and peopled by strangely sinister looking children and the spectral vision of legendary artists such as Durer, Kippenberger, and Picasso. “Winter’s pictures may be as entertaining as a Hollywood movie,” claims American art critic, Donald Kuspit, “but they are also existentially powerful….” In exploring the complicitious nature of art, creativity, madness, and death, Winter’s work is as peculiarly particular as it is universal.

Born in 1968 in Kent, England, Christopher Winter is a member of the Artists Group Special X. He received a BA with Honors from Camberwell School of Art in London and completed his post graduate work at Dusseldorf Kunstakademie. An artist in residence of the city of Mannheim, Germany in 1993 and 1994, his work has been featured in solo and group shows throughout Europe and New York. This is Mr. Winter’s third New York solo exhibition with Edelman Arts.

Edelman Arts, the art gallery of Asher Edelman, located in a turn of the century townhouse on New York City’s Upper East Side, showcases the work of emerging, mid-career, and established artists.

CHRISTOPHER WINTER : Spook-a-rama
October 30 – December 6, 2008
Opening Reception: October 30, 6-8 pm