Art Madrid'23 – Café Lehmitz in pictures, a vivid experience

Anders Petersen. Café Lehmitz. 1967-1970

 

 


In this occasion, PhotoEspaña 2017 has given `carte blanche´ to the renowned photographer Alberto García-Alix to design an exhibition with his influential artists, in order to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Festival. These selected artists will show their works in Círculo de Bellas Artes, Museum of Romanticism and CentroCentro Cibeles. They are Antonie d'Agata, Pierre Molinier, Paulo Nozolino, Teresa Margolles, Karlheinz Weinberger y Anders Petersen.

 

 

 

Anders Petersen. Café Lehmitz. 1967-1970

 


Anders Petersen (Stockholm, 1944) approached to art through painting and writing, and after meeting Christer Ströholm he started with photography. He studied in several art schools in Stockholm and collaborated as a photographer in numerous swedish publications. He worked as a teacher at the Cinema and Photography University of Gothemburg, Sweden. Petersen has received numerous grants and rewards since the seventies, and regularly organises workshops and exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and in the USA. In 1978, he published `Café Lehmitz´ in Germany. With this book he reached international recognition and the information that it presents is enhanced by the photographs in the current exhibition.

 

 

Anders Petersen. Café Lehmitz. 1967-1970

 

 

Anders Petersen´s photographs describe in a very human and familiar way the life of Café Lehmitz, a bar that the artist found in Hamburg's Red Light District. This local was the meeting point of prostitutes, transvestites, drug addicts and indigents. There, they developed their life stories and relationships, in which the artist took part during three years. He developed his project between 1967 and 1970 and when it was finished was exhibited for the first time on the same bar. This project was considered a key element in european urban photography.

 

 

Anders Petersen. Café Lehmitz. 1967-1970

 


CentroCentro offers the visitor the chance of becoming part of Café Lehmitz´s extraordinary world, living a night with its extravagant protagonists throughout the exhibition. It can be visited on the fifth floor until September 17th.

 

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.