Geta Brătescu. The Gesture, The Drawing

Coinciding with the Hauser & Wirth Publishers presentation “Geta Brătescu x Albert Kriemler. A Collaboration” is ‘Geta Brătescu. The Gesture, The Drawing’ at the recently opened Hauser & Wirth Rämistrasse space. The carefully selected body of works in the exhibition render the different means in which Brătescu engaged the primordial unit of the line – in curved, hard-edged, contained or spread compositions. The artist would often draw with her eyes closed, connecting with pen and paper through the sensation of touch and feeling, as seen in the works from the series ‘Drawing With Eyes Closed’. For Brătescu, the line is manifest in the movement of the artist’s hand in space as it handles the pencil, the marker or the scissors, creating a flow of shapes, forms and silhouettes. As Brătescu explained, ‘No matter what tool I might use, when I draw and then examine my work, I think that the musicality of the line is in my nature. I liked to dance. When I draw, I can say that my hand dances.’ The presentations coincide with the major exhibition ‘Geta Brătescu – L’art c’est un jeu sérieux’ at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (on view until 15 November 2020). This exhibition will then travel to GL Strand in Copenhagen in January 2021.

Brătescu originally studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Bucharest, in the late 1940s but was expelled due to the Communist party’s objection to her parents’ middle class background. Over the course of a seven-decade career she went on to develop a deeply personal practice and was one of the first representatives of conceptualist approaches in Romania. Brătescu’s oeuvre comprises drawing, collage, textiles, photography, experimental film and performance which mines themes of identity, gender, and dematerialisation. Her aesthetic – lo-fi, handmade, incorporating everyday materials – evolved from an attitude towards her studio as a safe environment of enclosure as well as a stage for playful invention. Her more recent international recognition, including her Venice Biennale presentation in 2017, provided a basis for the re-evaluation of her experimental work within the framework of conceptual practices.

Akris is an international fashion house founded in 1922 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Creative Director Albert Kriemler designs sleek and effortless collections for a discerning global clientele of women with purpose. His signature accessories include the Ai bag made of coveted Mongolian horsehair and artistic Collector’s scarf editions. The third-generation family owned fashion house is renowned for its rarefied and innovative doubleface, for pushing the boundaries of St. Gallen embroidery and pioneering digital photo printing techniques. Since Akris’ first show at Paris Fashion Week in 2004, Creative Director Albert Kriemler continuously finds inspiration in the inventive oeuvre of renowned artists, photographers and architects. His most profound collaborations have been with artists such as Geta Brătescu (Spring/Summer 2019), Rodney Graham (Fall/ Winter 2017), Carmen Herrera (Spring/Summer 2017) and Thomas Ruff (Fall/Winter 2016) as well as architects such as Sou Fujimoto (Spring/Summer 2016) or Alexander Girard (Spring/Summer 2018).

Akris has subsidiaries in Japan, the United States and Korea and operates its own boutiques in major cities around the globe. The collections are also available in over 300 selected points of distribution worldwide.

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Hauser & Wirth
Rämistrasse 16
8001 Zürich
Switzerland