Aaron Rahe

Visual fine artist.

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Schnell.  Extrem. Bunt.
Eine Feier der Widersprüchlichkeit.
Ein Requiem, arrangiert für Ukulelenorchester.
Meine Arbeit ist der Blitzableiter für Gedankenstürme.


Figuren und formale Experimente dienen als Projektions-
flächen. Mein gedankliches Material sind missverstande-
ne Stanzen, abgegriffene Slogans, Glaubenssätze aus dem

ganzen Repositorium menschlichen Sprachabfalls.
Philosophie mit Baseballschläger.

Neonfarben, Heftpflaster, Kaffeepulver, dicke Farbschla-
cken und comichafter Groteske erzeugen daraus ein pro-
duktives Drittes. Es geht nicht einfach um Bad Painting –
es geht um das beste schlechte Bild: Best Bad Painting in
town.
So entsteht ein intellektuelles Amalgam, erratisch
und doch logisch.
Ich nenne das - die NEUE DEUTSCHE GRELLE.
Die Figuren wecken in ihrer Albernheit eine bestimmte Art der Empathie und gewinnen damit letztlich eine trans-
zendente Qualität: Erhabenheit.

Speak loud, be hurt

2023 - 2024

Falling Sensations

2021

Digital Natives

2020

Neutschland

Paintings

What is germany about today? 

As a painter, I am fascinated by surfaces. The closest you can come to the surface of a state is its flag. Inspired by worn out flags, that hung from balconies in poor parts of the city, the Neutschland Scheme was developed. Instead of black, red and yellow, the Neutschland Scheme consists of violet, rosa and pale yellow. Going deeper in the superficial appearance of country, politics and media discourse, you will always recognize narratives. Complex matters are facilitated into simple slogans. People of public interest are rather seen as decal images, armed with catchphrases instead of discourse knowledge providing opinions instead of arguments. 

In Neutschland, a dreamland is painted. A worryless utopia.

MelencoliAAA+

2010+

A heap of ruins: "However, there is also another work: it is precise, clear, neat. And it is not a painting, but a sculpture. Its point of departure is one of the most enigmatic works in art history, Albrecht Dürer’s etching Melencolia I. Therein a winged being, in pensive thought, sits before a truncated triangular trapezohedron, a geometric object even more complex than its name. Aaron replicates this polyhedron in large numbers and builds these objects into a column that could be endless, each object carrying the insignias of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes.The work’s title: I love America and America loves me.

This work of art is a little stroke of genius, quoting no less than five heroes of art history: Dürer, Warhol, the Romanian Constantin Brancusi, who invented the endless column, and Joseph Beuys, whose New York performance in 1974 gave the work its title. The mystic Beuys and the pop artist Warhol belonged to the second-to-last generation of the „heroic“ modern period, before conceptual art finalised that era and the idea of the post-modern took the lead. Aaron’s homage to modernism is, at the same time, a caricature of this era: there is hardly anything more absurd than taking, of all things, one of the most complex geometric structures as the basis for endless repetitions. 

With this sculpture the young artist characterises the situation his generation is facing: it’s a heap of ruins. The major fuel of modern art, innovation, has fallen flat[.]"

Exerpt from: Dr. Ernst A. Busche: Aaron Rahe

Best bad painting in town

2012

Seemingly unattached topics are forced together to generate something new. Productive misunderstandings generate beauty. The relation of ground and figure works like the relation of the human and the world. Layers of paint are forming tissues that are forming figures, that are forming a body of work. Painting is like wrestling. Showfights, outfits, faces and heels. 

Agenda Patata

2012 - 2018

The "Agenda Patata" paintings are recurring to the topos of the still life, grading it up towards the potatoe. "You potatoe" has become a common insult for germans. The potatoes are starting point for rather graphical examinations of light and shade in the tradition of nature studies. The weird, useless objects indicate a creator and are sometimes combined with other materials, or figures, such as floating metaphysical frites, or a golden background like they were russian icons.



Pyramid Schemes

Series, 2018

The "Pyramid Schemes" Series represents a very special way of uniting painting and collage: Paint glues together thrown away and torn out pages that are crumbled to resemble snowballs. Art history books, fine art magazines and catalogues of auction houses build up most of the work. Each of these works is crowned by a reproduction of a work by Aaron Rahe, visualizing the central art market mechanic: Once aquired into a collection, collectors and museums are bound to praise the work of the artist, if they do not want to risk gambling with the worth of their aquisition.

Best bad painting in town

2014

Using art history and personal mythologies as working material, I portrait contemporary paradigms in front of classical backdrops to show their permanent presence. Insufficience meets hybris.

Great painting - five stars

2018

GET LOW

2017

Super states of mind

2018

Altered states of mind require altered forms of art. Contemporary technology evokes contemporary feelings. Never before has technology felt so warm, has work felt so much like family, have peergroups replaced subcultures.

The paintings resemble interior or exterior sensations. In this logic, paintings like "super awake" are made out of paint and coffee grounds, while "super asleep" is enhanced by crushed sleeping pills. In terms of composition, the golden frame of digital face recognition replaces the urge to portrait faces, and the tinfoil hats of conspiracy theorists become the rembrandtish icons of our time.

SOLO SHOWS
2021: Aaron Rahe – Falling Sensations, Galerie Mellies, Detmold (Katalog)
2019: Aaron Rahe – Mal so, Mal so. Kunstverein Kaponier, Vechta
2018: Aaron Rahe – Förderpreis Malerei der Öffentlichen Oldenburg, Stadtmuseum Oldenburg (Katalog)
2016: Museum Villa Stahmer, Georgsmarienhütte
2013: happy black bile. Projektraum zqm, Berlin (Katalog)
2010: Abschlussfilm M.A. (Regie, Schnitt, gefördert durch die Oldenburgische Landschaft)
2009: Künstlerhaus Jan Oeltjen, Jaderberg (Katalog, gefördert durch die Oldenburgische Landschaft)

GROUP SHOWS
2024: Museumsquartier Osnabrück (Katalog)
2023: skulpturgalerie Osnabrück (Katalog)
2023: Kunstfoyer Oldenburg (Katalog)
2022: mom art space, Hamburg
2021: EIN AUSSERGEWÖHNLICHES EREIGNIS, Projection Mapping auf dem Agravis-Futtermittelwerk, Oldenburg
2021: Kunstverein Roter Keil, Graz
2021: Skulpturgalerie Osnabrück (Katalog)
2021: Zagreus Projects, Berlin (Katalog)
2021: Riga Art Space, Riga (Katalog)
2021: Shortlist Koschatzky Art Award: Palais Schönborn-Batthyány, Wien (Katalog)
2020: Förderpreis Junge Kunst, Kunstverein Centre Bagatelle, Berlin (monografischer Katalog)
2020: Kunstpreis Osnabrück, Museumsquartier Osnabrück (Katalog)
2020: Delphi Space, Freiburg
2019: Kunstpreis Rastede, Palais Rastede (Katalog)
2018: Villa De Bank, Enschede, NL (Katalog)
2018: Enzyklopädie des Zarten, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin (Katalog)
2017: Projektraum Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
2017: Schwartzsche Villa, Berlin (Katalog)
2017: Junge Prager, Junge Berliner II, Tschechische Botschaft, Berlin (Katalog)
2016: Junge Kunst im Ruhrgebiet: Shortlist Wilhelm-Zimolong-Förderpreis der Stadt Gladbeck (Katalog)
2017: Kunst- und Designzentrum SMETANA Q, Prag
2016: weiss lügt, La Chaufferie, Strasbourg
2014: Galerie Florent Tosin, Berlin
2011: Wilde Jäger, FRISCH Kunsthalle, Berlin
2011: Landesvertretung Schleswig-Holsteins, Brüssel, Belgien
2009: Grafikbiennale Novosibirsk (Projektbeteiligung unter Cornelia Sollfrank) (K)

2015 Meisterschüler, Universität der Künste Berlin
2014 Absolvent, Universität der Künste Berlin
2010 M.F.A.-Studium, Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel, Master of Arts, Integrated Media, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
2007 Bachelor of Arts, Kunst und Medien, Philosophie,
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg,
* 1986 Teutoburger Wald, Niedersachsen



2024 Kunstpreis Osnabrück (Nominierung)
2021 Koschatzky-Art-Award (Nominierung)
2021 Franz-Hecker-Stipendium (Zweiter Preis)
2020 Kunstpreis Osnabrück (Nominierung)
2020 Förderpreis Junge Kunst des Centre Bagatelle (Preisträger)
2019 Kunstpreis der Gemeinde Rastede (Nominierung)
2018 Förderpreis Malerei der Kulturstiftung der Öffentlichen Versicherungen Oldenburg (
Preisträger)
Kunstpreis Wesseling (
Nominierung)
Sonderkunstpreis des Kunstvereins Ahlen (
Nominierung)

2016 Kunstpreis des Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin (
Nominierung
Wilhelm-Zimolong Preis der Stadt Gladbeck (
Nominierung)
2015 & 16 Warsteiner Blooom Award (
Nominierung)

Aaron Rahe

Mobirise

Contact

Email: info@aaron-rahe.com