Salong

SALONG at Projekt 0047 in Berlin examines the salon as a model for showing contemporary painting beyond a purist and meditative isolation of the single image.

SALONG is an exhibition presenting recent figurative works by 16 painters. The exhibition explores the format of a traditional painting exhibition, where different subjects and manners of painting are combined and confronted in a limited space.

SALONG draws on a very intense period in modern art history. In the art salons of Paris in the mid 19th century, the art of painting became a matter for a broader audience, and public art critique was established. Baudelaire wrote critical reviews in the Gazettes on the latest developments in elaborated artistic taste, while Daumier satirically sketched the bourgeois audience in their consumption of artistic happenings.

The salon is today a strangely ambiguous space, conservative and progressive at the same time. The salon originally was a place for satisfying the taste of a reactionary audience. But soon, the independent salons - being an early form of an artist run space - became arenas for new tendencies to be shown. The SALONG tries to capture these two main qualities, being both a space for observation and leisure strolling, and a forum for discussions and arguments.