Art Cologne 2021: Our five art highlights!

Whether young, fresh positions or exciting works by established artists: there is a lot to discover at Art Cologne from November 17 to 21 at 150 galleries. Our five highlights you should not miss!

We show you our five art highlights of Art Cologne

A pleasing number of female artists can be found among the 20 "New Positions", each occupying 25 square meters. Austrian Assunta Abdel Azim Mohamed's trademark is ballpoint pen drawings reminiscent of hidden object paintings. She says, "I examine the interpersonal in people's daily relationships and actions. In doing so, I dissect the rigid faces of my characters and expose deep psychological minefields." Moving between figuration and abstraction, cute and grotesque are the works of Polish artist Aneta Kajzer, also a "New Position." She tries to shatter unambiguities and allow ambivalences. The art of interpretation is required from the viewer: Are two dots and a cucumber-shaped object already a face?

Young, female, new - the Art Cologne 2021

INFO: Assunta Abdel Azim Mohamed at Galerie Ernst Hilger: Hall 11.1 / Stand B 30 Aneta Kajzer at Galerie Conrads: Hall 11.2 / Stand C 8

Assunta Abdel Azim Mohamed's works, which are reminiscent of hidden object pictures, are created with ballpoint pens. She is represented at the "New Positions" by the Viennese gallery Ernst Hilger. "Hooked," 2018, ballpoint pen on paper, 100 x 100 cm

Contradictions and ambiguities characterize Aneta Kajzer's intensely colored paintings, shown by Galerie Conrads. "Go With The Flow", 2021, Oil on canvas, 160 x 120 cm

artist and CONRADS Düsseldorf/Berlin

At Art Cologne it will be fantastic, abstract and realistic

Three positions are particularly worth seeing at DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM: In Bernhard Martin's surreal compositions reality and fiction merge. He is fascinated by the depths of the human soul, the paradoxical and the phantasmatic. Delicate, warm brown and natural tones characterize Fatma Shanan's figurative-abstract oil painting. She addresses the tense body in relation to nature and tackles rigid ideals about the medium itself, gender roles, and notions of ethnicity. Also exciting is the computer-generated painting by Klaus Jörres in the "New Positions" section: He uses the grid as a formal principle that shifts, rotates and overlaps to create fluctuations, image distortions and abstract pictorial spaces.

INFO: Gallery DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM: Hall 11.2 / Booth B 19

"Big House, Big Worm, Big Brain" is the name of Bernhard Martin's painting. He is inspired by the fantastic and paradoxical. Courtesy: Bernhard Martin, copyright the artist, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany, courtesy DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin

Here Fatma Shanan depicts herself with an oversized bouquet of flowers, grappling with outdated ideals in a stern pose. Courtesy: Fatma Shanan, copyright the artist, courtesy DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin

Viewing and floating - one of our art highlights

It was only five years ago that Nir Altman opened his gallery in Munich, which is thus considered a "new market". He shows works by the artist Roy Mordechay, born in Israel in 1976. The futuristic, fictional images combine references from the digital age, cultural artifacts, the visual language of the Middle Ages and prehistoric cave paintings. Mordechay says, "I see the painting process as one that involves different layers of consciousness, from watercolor-based backgrounds to graphic lines, figures and shapes. This stimulates the viewer's mind to try to connect the dots. And possibly gives us a chance to pause, to float. Like the feeling of waking up while trying to remember what I just dreamed."