Keith Coventry

When advertising logos become abstract signs | The most diverse materials, such as muslin and wax | With essays by Michael Bracewell and Diedrich Diedrichsen

With this publication, Keith Coventry (*1958, Burnley, Great Britain) presents an overview of his oeuvre from its beginnings in the early 1990s to the present day, shedding light on his exploration of the legacy of modernism and post-modernism. In his series Junk Paintings (2012), for example, a new visual vocabulary containing elements of the famous McDonald's logo shifts into focus, blending with Minimalism and Pop Art. In the white Pure Junk Paintings (2015/16) he continues his work with these formal elements, but using new materials: wood, muslin, beeswax, glass, and gesso lend the paintings a sculptural presence. The same is true of the series Golden Arches (2016), for which parts of the McDonald's logo were cast in bronze and heavily gold plated, contrasting a cheap, mass produced commodity with materials representing permanence, craft, and value. In Coventry's art the consumer world and mass production encounter an aesthetic characterized by beauty and timelessness.

Auteur
Diedrich Diederichsen, geboren 1957 in Hamburg, war in den 80er Jahren Redakteur von Musikzeitschriften, in den 90ern Hochschullehrer. Er veröffentlicht regelmäßig in "Texte zur Kunst", "Theater heute" und "Tagesspiegel" und lebt in Berlin. Zahlreiche weitere Veröffentlichungen.