Wolfgang Neumann - Kopfstand. Aras Ören zum 75.Geburtstag

Wolfgang Neumann, Kopfstand Exhibition and Book Launch
In celebration of the 75th birthday of Aras Ören
Turkish writer, Member of the German Academy of Arts,
Berlin
December 2 – 24, 2014
When Aras Ören’s volume of poetry Privatexil came out in
1977, Peter von Becker wrote about this book as well as
about the previously published poems Was will Niyazi in
der
Naunynstrasse (1973) and Der kurze Traum aus Kagithane
(1974) in the German weekly DIE ZEIT: “Aras Ören’s
poems
belong in my view to the most beautiful texts, and the
most
significant, not just in an interior literary sense, that have
been written in German-speaking countries in recent
years.”
Almost forty years have passed since then, and until the
end
of the millennium, Aras Ören, who had settled in 1969 in
West Berlin and worked not just as a writer, but also as
journalist for the radio and TV station Sender Freies Berlin,
where he finally also headed the editorial staff of RBB’s
Radio
Multikulti, published more than 30 books in German:
volumes
of poetry, novels, stories...

In 1983, he has been honoured by the Bavarian Academy
of
Arts, in 1985 he received the Adelbert-von-Chamisso-
Award,
in 1999 he lectured poetics at the Tübingen University, and
in
May 2012 Aras Ören was appointed a member of the
Academy of Arts, Berlin.

However, for more than ten years, Aras Ören, who
continued
to publish new literary works in Turkey, was strangely no
longer published in Germany – until now.

We are very pleased indeed to be able to not just present
finally a German book by this Turkish Berlin author:
Kopfstand, a beautiful volume of stories published just a
week ago by Verbrecher Verlag. But there is more: Aras
Ören’s stories were congenially illustrated by Wolfgang
Neumann, whom our gallery has been representing since
2009. In our exhibition, we present all 48 drawings printed
in
Kopfstand, executed by the artist in pencil or watercolour
pencil.

We are very pleased indeed to be able to present also a
festschrift with texts by German writers Friedrich Christian
Delius, Peter Schneider, and Jürgen Theobaldy, well-known
colleagues and long-standing friends of the Turkish poet
and
novelist.

Ceci n'est pas une Festschrift – for certain reasons, the
title is
inspired by a famous painting by the Belgian surrealist
René
Magritte – is available at the gallery, and also at
bookstores.
www.berlin-contemporary-art.com