CCA SER | 23.09.23 - 23.12.23
CCA Andratx is pleased to present the post-residency exhibition Do you believe in goats? by German artist Anna Nero. During her residency at CCA Studios in May 2023, Nero created a series of small format oil and acrylic on canvas paintings that are now on view at CCA SER. The wall painting was created by the artist on the days prior to the opening, which took place on the framework of La Nit de l’Art 2023.
Anna Nero’s work has a humorist and ironic side. She likes to play with her titles, and mix, sample and quote artists throughout art history in a postmodern manner, but always with a playful wink of the eye. As the artist states, the exhibition’s title is a pun inspired by friend talks in the unique setting of the studios during her residency. It is not uncommon to see dozens of goats coming down from the mountains to find some greenery to eat. Their bleating in the absolute darkness and silence of the night can mistake them for ghosts, hence the expression “Do you believe in goats?”.
Anna Nero is interested in the ways we interpret the material world around us, how we relate to objects – physically, emotionally, and psychologically – and what meanings and power we attribute to them. In her process, she constantly crosses paths between strict and sleek geometrical forms and bold, playful brush strokes. Her paintings oscillate between these two poles – constructed and intuitive, strict and playful.
Most of her works start with systematic grids and patterns, which are overpainted by gestures and forms in the following process. The grid makes it easier for her to place objects or gestures on the canvas, and it is an operating, organizing system as well as an element in the painting itself. The imagined objects appear floating in front of and in between the spatial layers of the picture plane. Smooth, flat surfaces and sharp edges alternate with dynamic gestural strokes and soft spray-painted lines. She implies the materiality of these unidentifiable objects only to immediately defy it through unexpected choices of form and placement.
Anna Nero (DE, 1988) lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany. She received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig in 2015. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in the United States at Long Story Short, NYC (formerly known as Another Place, NYC), Germany, and Italy, and in several group exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and North America. She co-runs the Frankfurt based project and exhibition space MARS. In 2022 she was a guest professor at the Art Academy Mainz, Germany. Her work is in private and public collections in Italy, Germany, Spain, and the US, including the G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig, Germany; the Museum of Fine Art Leipzig, Germany; the Public Art collection of the State of Saxony; the Sammlung Zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (German National Art Collection); and the public art collection of the City of Frankfurt, Germany; Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY, amongst others.