Omar Chowdhury

Solo Exhibition and Artist Residency

Curated by Rachel Rits-Volloch

MOMENTUM is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Berlin of the lyrically cinematic video works of Australian-Bangladeshi artist Omar Chowdhury.

Made in a deep, two-year immersion into spiritual sites and spaces in Dhaka, this ambitious body of works explores the processes, materials, and theologies of spiritual practice in a formalist yet rhythmic accumulation of imagery, sounds and meanings.

Encompassing the places, rituals, music, lives, and beliefs of holy and lay-believers, the artist has created a complex, absorbing series of works that combine and re-purpose fictional, documentary, and experimental techniques to create a rich, philosophical and phenomenological enquiry into religious practice and its representation.

In 2014 Omar Chowdhury has current and upcoming solo exhibitions at Shepparton Art Museum and Galleries UNSW. He is the recent recipient of a Bengal Foundation Commission (2014), a finalist for the John Fries Award (2014), received an Australia Council Skills and Development Grant (2014), an Edward M. Kennedy Grant for the Arts (2013), and an Australian Cinematographer’s Society Gold Award. He has shown works in galleries, institutions, and festivals in Australia, Asia, and Europe. He was born in 1983 and studied at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He currently lives and works both in Sydney, Australia and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition originated at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney, Australia, in May – August 2014 under the title of WAYS. With gratitude to 4A, the Keir Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts, and the EMK Centre in Dhaka, MOMENTUM is very pleased to bring this stunning exhibition to Berlin, and to show for the first time in Berlin the work of this extraordinary emerging talent.

READ THE CATALOGUE OF FORM AS BEING

ABOUT MARK GISBOURNE
In Dialogue with Omar Chowdhury on Oct 4th at MOMENTUM Berlin

MARK GISBOURNE: Stratford-on-Avon, in England (1948). Educated in Rome, and Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he was a tutor. Lecturer Master’s Programme, Slade School of Art, University College, University of London, and Senior Lecturer Sotheby’s Institute, Masters Programmes (accreditation University of Manchester). A former President of the British Art Critics Association (AICA), and an International Vice-President who co-organised the World Congress of Art Critics, Tate Modern at its opening in 2000. He is an international curator of numerous exhibitions, and a writer of more than a dozen books and over two hundred and fifty catalogue essays, having been published in over twenty languages. His latest publications in 2013/14 include among others monographic essays and publications on Bosco Sodi (Berlin, Mexico City and New York, 2014), Adrian Ghenie (Berlin, London and New York, with Hatje Cantz, 2014), Markus Keibel (Berlin, Distanz Verlag, 2013), Philipp Fürhofer ‘Diaspheres’ (Berlin, Hatje Cantz, 2014), James Lee Byars: The Secret Archive (The Dieter Hacker Collection) (Berlin, Nikolai Verlag, 2014), Rayk Goetz (Kerber Verlag, 2014). In 2015, Jakob Straub: Rome Rotunda (Hatje Cantz, 2015). There are forthcoming monographs on the Leipzig painters Johannes Rochhausen, and Markus Matthias Krueger, and on the deceased American painters Patrick Angus (1953-92) and Alice Neel. He continues to curate the international Rohkunstbau (Brandenburg) international summer exhibitions (2004, XI to XXI, ‘Apocalypse’ June, 2015). His large touring museum exhibition publication I am a Berliner: Eighteen Positions in Berlin Painting (Zagreb HDLU, Tell Aviv Museum, and MASEDU, Sassari, Sardinia) appeared 2012-13. In Planning is a large exhibition of post-war and contemporary art to take place in Riga, Latvia, later this year 2015. He currently lives and works in Berlin.