Osmar Osten @MOUNTAINS, Berlin

After having shown multiple works by Osmar Osten (*1959, lives in Chemnitz) earlier this year in the group exhibition 'Tagesschau. Invited by Eric Meier', Mountains is delighted to announce the first solo show of the artist with the gallery. The exhibition 'OSMAR OSTEN – With works by Hans Platschek' presents new work by Osmar Osten that reveal the artist's recent occupation with the use and aesthetics of acrylic and spray paint. In a suite of middle scaled paintings on canvas the artist plays with a variety of motifs new and old to his repertoire of images: kites, the Räuchermann, a toy soldier nutcracker, figures in front of a computer, spiral hearts. Typical for this artist, words or phrases (not necessarily the work's titles) are included in some of these paintings, for example the smoke in two Räuchermann paintings is formed through the words 'iT' and 'Bla Bla'. In another painting it laconally says 'Kein Herz / Kein Infrakt', a rhetorical technique the artist used previously in the word paintings 'Durst ist Geld' and 'Kein Durst ist kein Geld'. Infrakt is an intentional typo of Infarkt, the German word for heart attack, and could be associated with a neo-dadaist play with words and meanings. In 2022 Osmar Osten was awarded with the 'Hans Platschek Preis für Kunst und Schrift' for his longstanding and unique activity in the field of working with art and language, especially regarding the situatedness of his oeuvre in two German systems, GDR and reunified Germany. Proceeding from there, three historic works by Hans Platschek (1923–2000) from the 1950s and 60s, 'Vögel' from 1950 as well as two works from Platschek's Informalist period, 'Hiob als Bonvivant' from 1962 and one untitled work from approximately 1964, have been included in Osmar Osten's exhibition. Osmar Osten was born in 1959 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, GDR, and lives and works in Chemnitz, DE. His Neue Sächsische Galerie Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Chemnitz, DE (2021); Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, DE (2010); Galerie Borssenanger, Chemnitz, DE (2010); Galleria Salvatore + Caroline Ala, Milano, IT (2006); Galerie Paula Böttcher, Berlin, DE (2003). His group exhibitions include Mountains, Berlin, DE (2022); Galerie Chobot, Wien, AT (2007); Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz, DE (2021, with Hito Steyerl, Laura Horelli, Susi Pop a.o., curated by Kasper König); Galerie Lelong, Zürich, CH (2006). Osmar Osten was recently featured in an artist profile by Sarah Alberti in a special edition of German MONOPOL magazine. Hans Platschek was born in 1923 in Berlin to a jewish mother and emigrated in 1939 to Uruguay. In 1951 he participated in the 1st São Paulo Biennial. In 1953 he returned to Europe; in Paris he met Max Ernst and Raoul Hausmann, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Asger Jorn. From 1955 to 1963 he lived in Munich where members of the art group SPUR introduced Platschek to Informel and the works of the Cobra group. Platschek participated in the XXIX Venice Biennale in 1958 and in documenta II in Kassel in 1959. In 1963 he became a guest lecturer at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, moved to Rome and London and finally settled in Hamburg where he lived until his death in 2000. Hans Platschek was married to writer Gisela Elsner from 1967 to 1976.