MPHQ Salon des Refusés presents art and radical artistic discussion in an informal setting with exhibitions, talks and dinners; held by invitation.
Based on the gatherings of the Stein Salon that would help to define Modernism in literature and art in the 20th century, these presentations, talks and extended private conversations bring artists, collectors, curators and gallerists together to extend the dialogue in person ‘en petit comité’; with the best in informal dining.
Great food, private conversation and drinks are aplenty. No photos of these events will appear online or on social media.
‘Die Schwimmende Tasse’. 16mm. Walter Dahn / Johannes Stüttgen / Boscher Theodor. 1992
Walter Dahn is a German painter, photographer and sound artist, who is one of the most important ‘Jungen Wilden’ of the 1980s and taught Painting at the Art School in Braunschweig. From 1971 to 1979 Dahn studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf as a Master Student of Joseph Beuys. His first works were drawings and installations in Room 19 of the Academy. The focus of his work rests largely in drawing, photography, and making Super 8 and 16mm films. From 1979 to 1982 he was a member of the Artists Collective Mülheimer Freiheit, along with Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Gerard Kever and Gerhard Naschberger. Walter Dahn lives and works in Cologne.
Ken McMullen is an award-winning film director and artist living currently in London. His feature films are distributed world wide, his documentaries broadcast extensively and his art works exhibited in leading contemporary art galleries in Europe, The United States and the Far East. Whilst his primary studio is in London he has been working in the CERN Prototype Workshop in Geneva and in Greece and Lisbon. Ken McMullen is an artist who became a filmmaker, and his films are both cinematic and painterly. He works intuitively and visually, with his films grounded in philosophy, history, psychoanalysis and literature. McMullen’s exhibition Signatures of the Invisible brought together artists and scientists working at CERN, the European particle physics facility near Geneva, and was shown at Centre de Edition Contemporaine, Geneve, the Museu Gulbenkian, Lisbon and at PS1 MOMA New York.
Francis Bacon I Derek Jarman Édouard Manet I Rembrandt
Saturday 14th March at 6pm MPHQ Project Space London I Cologne
SCREENING 1:
Opening Saturday 15th February from 6 pm with Ken McMullen, Martha Parsey, Walter Dahn, Boscher Theodor with a few words from Friedhelm Mennekes
MPHQ Project Space London I Cologne
In a new series of screenings of films on art and art cinema, this exhibition brings together the work of leading artists and thinkers in Europe, from Manet to Bacon, from Beuys to Metzger, Derrida and Berger with short films and installations by Ken McMullen, Martha Parsey, Walter Dahn, Boscher Theodor and Johannes Stüttgen that explore the relationship between film, art theory, philosophy and painting.
MPHQ Project Space London I Cologne, opened by Martha Parsey in 2018, presents established mid-career artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and cinema. Martha curates exhibitions, screenings, seminars and artist’s talks to support an ongoing exchange and dialogue about what engages artists working today.
The exhibition FILM ON ART I ART ON FILM brought together the work of leading European artists and thinkers that explore the relationship between film, art theory, philosophy and painting.
WAYS OF SEEING; Film Installations and Collaborations, was a critical appraisal of the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Joseph Beuys, that presented film installations and collaborations that emanate from Beuys’ oeuvre and teachings. The exhibition Bacon on Camera marked the 30 year anniversary since Francis Bacon’s death with the screening of Martha’s films Model and Artist; Henrietta Moraes and Francis Bacon and Bacon in Paris.
Martha recently presented the first gallery screening of Ken McMullen’s film Hamlet Within starring Ian McKellen, John Shrapnel, Gabriella Wright, Lex Shrapnel, Dominique Pinon and Martha Parsey.
The exhibition Paradise Lost shown in Cologne and based on the work of John Milton and Paul Gauguin was extended to be shown in London at They Come. They Sit. They Go enabling further exchange between artists and gallery spaces between the EU and UK.
Martha studied Fine Art and Film at Central St Martins College of Art, the University of the Arts London, the University of the Arts Berlin and the German Film and Television Academy. Her films on Francis Bacon, screened at the ICA and Hayward Gallery, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Haus der Kunst, Munich and at Ordovas Gallery, New York, formed a lasting collaboration with the art critic and interviewer David Sylvester. Shortlisted for the Lexmark European Art Prize and the Sovereign European Art Prize, her paintings have been exhibited widely in the UK, Europe and the US, with her work in a number of collections including the Ovitz Family Collection, the Zabludowicz Collection and the Musée National d’art Moderne, Paris.
Martha Parsey, born in London, is a painter and film-maker who studied Fine Art and Film at Central St Martins College of Art, the University of the Arts London, the University of the Arts Berlin and the German Film and Television Academy. Her films on Francis Bacon, made in collaboration with David Sylvester, have been screened at the ICA and Hayward Gallery, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Haus der Kunst, Munich and at Ordovas Gallery, New York. Shortlisted for the Lexmark European Art Prize and the Sovereign European Art Prize, her paintings have been exhibited widely in the UK, Europe and the US, with her work in a number of prestigous collections including the Ovitz Family Collection, the Zabludowicz Collection and the Musée National d’art Moderne, Paris.
In 2018 Martha founded MPHQ Project Space London I Cologne.
Frequently employing dark glamour and a wry deliberate humour, her paintings, depicting female impropriety, work within the tradition of feminist art to offer a riposte to self-censure. Drawn to investigate the meaning of cultural trends she invites the viewer to reflect on the ways in which gender, class, sexuality and spectatorship slyly intersect to circumscribe the repertoire of legitimate actions available to women.
While sceptical of straightforward narratives of empowerment, the paintings depict the differences between private and public selves, as well as the adoption of protective guises as a form of subterfuge, often discomfortingly at odds with the inner self.
Krzysztof Honowski’s work is concerned with misunderstandings, tangents, agglomerations of information, the re-interpretation of pop cultural iconography – especially the points where it becomes opaque.
Honowski studied at the University of Cambridge, Slade School of Fine Art London, and Academy of Media Arts Cologne. His work has been presented extensively in Europe, including at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Zabludowicz Collection London, the Barbican London, Von der Heydt Museum Wuppertal, Jewish Museum Berlin and Athens Museum of Queer Arts.
Krzystof Honowski lives and works in Cologne and Berlin
