EXHIBITION

Imura art gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photography by Roland Hagenberg.
Hagenberg came to know the artists who defined the 1980s New York art scene, and was able to photograph them naturally in his own inimitable style. According to the photographer, “interviewing Andy Warhol got me hooked on his fleeting expressions that were only visible through the viewfinder. I began to shoot artists from that point on.” Hagenberg’s portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat recently caught the world’s attention as part of the exhibition Basquiat: Boom for Real at the Barbican in London and at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris. The Imura art gallery exhibition presents some of Hagenberg’s portraits of other artists in addition to photographs of Basquiat and Warhol.


     Yuzo Imura





Roland Hagenberg


Roland Hagenberg was born in Austria and brought up in Vienna. He currently lives and works in Tokyo and Kyoto. A multimedia creator, his artistic talents can be seen in a number of genres, including his work as a photographer and as a writer. His photography and articles have often been carried by publications such as VOGUE and Architectural Digest, and in the 1980s he collaborated with many artists in print media projects that visually documented the New York art world. More recent projects have included providing photographs of Basquiat that became the main visuals and catalogue photographs for Basquiat retrospectives at the Barbican Center in London and the Mori Arts Center in Tokyo, gracing the cover of the Barbican catalogue. Recent exhibitions by Hagenberg include New York Portraits: 1983 Revisited (Ace Hotel, Kyoto, 2021) and Basquiat and NY Artists: Photographs by Roland Hagenberg (Mitsubishi Jisho Artium, Fukuoka, 2018).



ⒸYoshiki Suzuki



– Roland Hagenberg in New York −

From 1979 to 1982 Roland Hagenberg lived in Berlin. At that time, the Western part of the city was still surrounded by the “Berlin Wall” (in the middle of communist East Germany). This unnatural situation (to lock up an entire modern city inside a wall) was bemoaned by regular citizens, but it attracted and inspired artists and musicians from all over the world. It is here, where Hagenberg wrote his first art book “Painters in Berlin” together with his friend Volker Diehl: A collection of interviews and photographs of contemporary German artists. A year later, Hagenberg visited New York for German magazine “Stern” to report on two young graffiti artists: Michael Stewart and Keith Haring. (Stewart had just been killed in a subway tunnel by police officers while painting walls. Haring was about to become world famous). After that, Hagenberg decided to move to New York in 1983 and continued his work among artists that were about to shape art history.

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Roland Hagenberg Photographs “ New York Friends”

[Part1]Sep10 (Sat) - Oct 1(Sat),2022 /[Part2]Oct 22 (Sat) - Nov 25 (Fri),2022 (Closed on Sundays,Mondays and National Holidays)

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