![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Robert-Longo.-Photo-\u00a9-Belaid-Le-Mharchi-682x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me this building looks like a city bank, you know, in the suburbs,\u201d say the American artist Robert Longo of Berlin\u2019s Capitain Petzel gallery, where his new exhibition \u201cStand\u201d is being shown. \u201cOr a BMW car dealership. I kept on thinking how the outside is the inside. You can\u2019t avoid the outside, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
You certainly can\u2019t \u2013\u00a0at least or not since Longo got hold of it: by masking the gallery\u2019s entire fa\u00e7ade in an enormous black & white American flag he successfully managed to transform a once-bright and airy space into a darkened cocoon \u2013 the perfect setting for the dark drawings inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cStand\u201d is one of Capitain Petzel\u2019s largest exhibitions to date, though Longo appeared calm and relaxed amid the preparation for what is also his first solo show in Berlin. It\u2019s an ambition he\u2019s held for years (Longo splits his time between Brooklyn and Charlottenburg, and is married to the the German actress Barbara Sukowa). \u201cBerlin is just so relaxing compared to New York\u201d he says, leaning back in his chair. \u201cI come here and I wake up, pick up a paper, get a coffee, go to the Bio Markt and then I sit on my balcony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than organic food and coffee, the themes of power, authority, and US politics have been central to his work since the Eighties when he produced a series of black-dyed American flags. That series was itself 10 years after his seminal \u201cMen in Cities\u201d work, which presented large-scale charcoal and graphite drawings of businessmen in contorted movement.<\/p>\n
Even though his work often focuses relentlessly on American iconography, Berlin nevertheless played a formative role in how oeuvre, and that\u2019s perhaps most visible in his drawing series, \u201dPeep Show of American Pornography\u201d (also included in \u201cStand\u201d), where Longo draws from his experiences of the Berlin peep shows of the 1980\u2019s. \u201cI remember the first time I came to Berlin, and I went to these porno places where you go look through the windows\u201d. Those furtive memories fed into the 25 drawings of his \u201cAmerican Porno\u201d series which includes realist documentary imagery of McDonalds, the Ku Klux Klan, Monster Trucks, Michael Jackson impersonators and Kim Kardashian.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s dissonant, provocative stuff, but that\u2019s the point. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in collage, I\u2019m not interested in pastiche, I am interested in collision,\u201d he says, confident in knowledge that \u201cStand\u201d would never see the light of day in his home country.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way,\u201d he says. \u201cIt either wouldn\u2019t be shown or it would be seen as preaching to the choir\u201d. AB<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTo me this building looks like a city bank, you know, in the suburbs,\u201d say the American artist Robert Longo of Berlin\u2019s Capitain Petzel gallery, where his new exhibition \u201cStand\u201d is being shown. \u201cOr a BMW car dealership. I kept on thinking how the outside is the inside. You can\u2019t avoid the outside, you know?\u201d…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10172],"tags":[100,10,428,184,51,429],"class_list":["post-5491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-berlin","category-film","tag-amy-binding","tag-belaid-le-mharchi","tag-berlin-people","tag-capitain-petzel","tag-gallery-weekend","tag-robert-longo"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n