From 10 to 25 November 2007.
The opening will host a poetic reading with actress Uta Wagner, Nov 10 at 6 pm.
Open Tuesday to Friday, 3-11pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11am-11pm. Free.
Info, tel. 340.879.83.27 - www.giudecca795.com
German painter and sculptor, Meister lives in Venice; in the Seventies he created a poetic language of his own: "birds" writing and abstract writing, imaginary alphabets made of signs which he inserts in his paintings as fragments or complete poems; they result in charming images enriched by his refined use of color.
Giudecca795, Fondamenta S.Biagio, Venezia
ACTV boat lines 41, 42 or 82, boat stop Palanca
(a few meters from Molino Stucky - Hilton Hotel)
Gerold Rainer Meister (CADAF), born in Westerstede, Germany, is a painter, sculptor, and decorator whose artistic development was greatly influenced by Max Ernst. In the 'seventies, CADAF invented a poetic language of his own: the writing of birds and abstract writing - imaginary alphabets made of symbols which he inserts as fragments or complete poems into his compositions, thus creating evocative images enriched by the refined use of colour (at times brilliant, at times delicate).
In 1980, he settled in Venice where he took an interest in Spatialism and, especially, the paintings of Tancredi, while maintaining his relationship with German cultural life. In Italy, his works came to define "poetic art". CADAF then moved to Paris where he develope his research about sculpture, creating the "Spirits" or "Angels" that he realised as sculpture in 1985, back to Venice.
In 1991, he won (with glass master Vittorino Zane) the first prize at Premio di Murano for his glass sculpture "Pesceuomo" (Manfish). From 1993 to 1997, he had one man exhibits in Milan and Venice, and several of his works are displayed in museums and private collections in Italy and around the world.
His creative energy continues to push him in new directions, influenced by an early source of inspiration that is hidden in his pseudonym. Besides being his signature, CADAF stands for Centro di Arti Figurative (Center for Representational Arts), which he founded, and also represents an acronym for a major artist from the German Romanticism movement, Caspar David Friedrich. CADAF's intense images of nature on exhibit at Giudecca 795 seem to approach the "sublime landscapes of Self" by this solitary and intellectual Romantic painter.
The encounter between mankind and nature is the subject of CADAF's latest works: paintings on wood (modern icons of meditation) and oils on canvas (representing deep emotional and sensory relationships). By representing the natural landscape, the Artist aims to eliminate a boundary, and the way in which he mixes colours to obtain something similar to Nature creates a sense of contact that is nearly miraculous.
The scenery is often a forest through which CADAF takes a personal and dreamlike inner path; his loneliness evokes sensations in which everyone can recognise themselves. The Artist represents himself as alone and thoughtful, and his sensitivity immerses itself in natural landscapes whose spaces he modifies to recreate images of inner life using writing that overlaps trees, clouds, and rivers.
The literary texts chosen by CADAF, integrated with his thoroughly personal written language, are the background for the symbols representing a landscape that blends surrealism and realism, painting and poetry.