Georg Dokoupil Unveils ‘venetian Bubbles 2.5’ At Osthaus Museum In Hagen | Winner Of The Karl Ernst Osthaus Prize

Extending through the museum’s two largest rooms, the exhibition presents an insightful exploration of Dokoupil’s oeuvre, reflecting a liberated body of work that reimagines traditional mediums and defies artistic categorization.

Press Tour: November 29, 2024 | 11 a.m.

On View: November 30, 2024 – February 23, 2025

As the winner of the 2024 Karl Ernst Osthaus Prize, a distinguished German cultural award granted biennially to visual artists, Georg Dokoupil is invited to present his solo exhibition ‘Venetian Bubbles 2.5,’ at the Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany, as part of the honor associated with this accolade. Curated by Reiner Opoku, the exhibition is set across the Neue Galerie and the Zentrale Halle, two of the largest spaces in the museum, featuring the artist’s first-ever large sculptural works in glass, nine large-scale paintings, a series of works on paper, and 20 small-sized bubble canvas. On view from November 30, 2024 – February 23, 2025, this contemporary intervention reflects the artist’s longstanding exploration of new materials and techniques, and innovative approaches to glassmaking with freedom, play, and humor, while capturing the ephemerality of existence.

A key figure in the Neue Wilde movement in Germany and known for his unconventional experimentations in the global art scene, Georg Dokoupil has never been confined to a specific genre or style. Instead, he transcends traditional practices, using unusual materials such as whip marks, candle soot, or fruit, and soap bubbles, demonstrating a multiplicity of approaches to painting and a body of work that defies categorization.

In ‘Venetian Bubbles 2.5’ Dokoupil presents nine large-scale paintings (ranging from 200 x 400 centimeters) depicting colored soap bubbles. Since the late 1970s, the artist has been exploring the subtleties of his technique, mixing soap-lye with pigments, and blowing bubbles onto a canvas coated with paint, guiding their burst to leave intricate organic imprints. These unpredictable patterns evoke a sense of spontaneity that challenges the control of the artist and the notion of permanence often found in the painting practice. Dokoupil simultaneously reflects on deeper themes of the human condition – the breath used to conceive the bubbles, evokes the fugacity of existence, while their imprints on the canvas reveal textures of the ephemeral. Presenting an insightful exploration of the artist’s body of work, the small-scale paintings displayed in the Zentrale Halle reveal the intricate layers and dynamic movements within Dokoupil’s enduring fascination with bubbles and foam.

The Neue Galerie hosts the complete series of works presented in ‘Venetian Bubbles’ – Dokoupil’s exhibition at Museo Correr in Venice earlier this year. Among the pieces, the artist’s new glass sculptures are an extension of his renowned Soap Bubble Paintings – their temporal element is now expressed in a three-dimensional space, narrowing the distance between the viewers and the subtleties of his practice. Seven metal bottle racks (80 – 200 centimeters tall) are adorned with glass bubbles of various bright hues. The artist names them ‘Homemade Venetian Bubbles’ honoring their national origin from various manufacturers and master craftsmen in crystal glass from the Bohemia region in the Czech Republic. Instructing the glassmakers to explore new creative dynamics in the sculptural process, the artist disrupts established techniques and the expectations associated with craftsmanship. The glass bubbles hanging on female-shaped bottle racks bring forth a striking juxtaposition between fragility and strength, underscoring recurring existential themes of transience and permanence in Dokoupil’s oeuvre. Captured and conserved at the peak of their existence, the bubble sculptures uncover layers of complexity and nuance in their form, texture, and spatial presence, inherent in the artist’s practice.

Among the highlights of the exhibition are the ‘Open Bubbles Condensation Cubes,’ a nod to Dokoupil’s former teacher Hans Haake’s ‘Condensation Cube’ (1963/68), which encapsulates glass bubbles within a box filled with condensed water. The work embodies Dokoupil’s approach of incorporating the environment and viewer into the art itself, mimicking a living system within the artwork.

‘Venetian Bubbles 2.5’ is an evolution of Georg Dokoupil’s multifaceted artistic practice – As delicate bubbles are transformed into timeless expressions of artistic ingenuity, Dokoupil's new works reflect his enduring pursuit of innovation, challenging the boundaries of artistic mediums through themes of impermanence and transcendence.