As part of the gallery exchange between Berlin and Paris initiated by the French Embassy, carlier | gebauer, in cooperation with the Galerie Natalie Seroussi from Paris, is showing a series of large-format drawings by Parisian litterateur, translator and draughtsman Pierre Klossowski (1905–2001, Paris). Even today Klossowski, who is firmly enshrined within the literary and art historical canon in France, is still not as well known in Germany as, for example, his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Klossowski’s oeuvre was not presented to the general public in Germany until the comprehensive solo exhibition held in Cologne’s Museum Ludwig in 2007.

This is the case even though Klossowski’s works are an important point of reference within Modernism’s artistic self-critique, whether one thinks of his translation of Walter Benjamin’s famous artwork essay, or his collaborations with Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze or Michel Foucault. For that reason too we are delighted to be able to present Klossowski’s works in conjunction with the Galerie Natalie Seroussi. They constitute a historical position that is also a lodestone for many of the artists represented by carlier | gebauer. The drawings created by Klossowski since the 1950s are searching for an artistic position that generates a new combination of seemingly unconnected historical citations in order to glean a perspective beyond that of a historically ambivalent Modernism.