Instinct Residency Program
Queens & Kings of Berlin
by Gareth Ernst
Opening 21.10.2022
Instinct Residency Project is proud to present our upcoming resident, Gareth Ernst. Our artist residency program is situated in the creative international art scene of Berlin. The residency enables participants to engage with the village berlin queer community as well as the wider Berlin community.
We are thrilled to announce Ernst’s solo exhibition including a series of workshops and a display of the finished artworks he has produced during his three-weeks residency beginning from early September 2022 until September 24, 2022 at we.are.village.
In the artist statement for his program titled, Kings and Queens of Berlin”, Ernst writes, “Inspired by a Pet Shop Boys song King’s Cross, Kings and Queens of Berlin will be a series of undraped portraits drawn and painted from life, made at the studio at the artist residency at Village, Berlin of gay, bisexual, trans and queer community members.
The Kings and Queens of Berlin are heroic and fearless. They gather in Berlin from all corners of the globe, America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. They are crowned and royal, diverse, proud and fearless.
The Kings and Queens of Berlin are full of Joy and Hope..
Kings and Queens of Berlin will be a series of works that document the lives and experiences of the community members of Village who come to Berlin from all over the World to create new lives free of fear and shame. The works will be made with the intimacy that life drawing and portrait painting gives, and will be made with due care and reverence to the subjects, their histories and stories.”
Biography
“Gareth Ernst’s work focuses on the intimate and fleeting, on mortality, desire, surveillance, and masculinity. Like the writings of Jean Genet, Gareth Ernst’s paintings, drawings and videos are illicit love letters. They deal with the secret and the underground, touching on the pornographic and the criminal. They are rapid, urgent and complete, revealing secret Worlds parallel to our own.
His studies of the human form are uncompromising and direct. Gareth’s work disrupts the tradition of idealising the human form, and instead uses it as a vehicle for exploring the themes of power, vulnerability and innocence.” -Porsche Herbert Funk
Gareth Ernst is an Australian born artist and completed his Masters in Fine Arts at the National Art School, Sydney Australia. He has worked in Berlin, London, San Francisco, New York and Sydney.
Friday, October 21
• Vernissage 18:00
instinct at village.berlin