Award-winning actress, best-selling author, humanitarian and feminist icon Sharon Stone has revealed her first art exhibition in Europe at Galerie Deschler in Berlin. ‘Sharon Stone: Totem’.
During the art exhibition’s opening weekend, Cinema for Peace 2024 will be honoring Sharon Stone
throughout Berlin at several major events.
‘Totem’ features 12 new and previously unseen paintings by Stone, whose art has won critical acclaim from esteemed art critics including New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz. Poetic titles of the abstract canvases such as ‘Ghosts’, ‘The Lovers, ‘Portrait of my Boyfriends from Foreign Countries’, ‘The Lake’ and ‘Zambezi’ evoke a sense of mystery.
Galerie Deschler hosts the European premiere of Stone’s paintings at the gallery founded by Marcus Deschler 1995, during the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he became part of a dynamically developing gallery scene.
We are honored to present Sharon Stone’s compelling paintings in her first exhibition in Europe,
says Marcus Deschler, the owner of the Gallery.
I could always relate to her because I felt that she perfectly represented the values that have guided my own development: freedom, self-determination, and autonomy
Sharon Stone is best known as an award-winning Hollywood actress, who found fame with her controversial and unforgettable performance in ‘Basic Instinct’ and went on to win a Golden Globe in Martin Scorsese’s Vegas Mob movie ‘Casino’, a stellar performance that also earned her an Oscar nomination. Yet she is more than a vessel for the vision of directors, and Polymath Stone went on to write her own unique script as the survivor of a stroke, a best-selling author, a humanitarian, feminist icon and artist. Stone’s autobiographical book ‘The Beauty of Living Twice’ made the New York Times bestseller list in 2021, and tells the story of her traumatic stroke and subsequent fight to recover and reclaim her life.
Totems are monuments to resilience and strength. These paintings feel totemic to me. They communicate how my life can feel stacked in a certain way. My daily artmaking helps me fight my way out from under the weight of this alarming time we are all living through. It’s not about how we fall, it’s about how we get up. Wonder is the experience we want to live in
adds Stone.
This exhibition came to me as a complete vision, from start to finish. Tapping into the female consciousness, my goal is to express ideas that are honest and authentic.
Painting has been part of Stone’s life since she was a child. Her Aunt Vonne had a Master’s degree in painting and would create murals across the walls of the home where Stone grew up. In college, she studied painting. During the COVID pandemic, Stone returned to her artmaking, painting every day, sometimes up to 17 hours per day. This period of global crisis inspired her to redirect her creative energies. Her lifelong creative instincts are now transferred onto the canvas. Stone’s capacity to turn human frailties into sources of strength, and her ability to observe and interpret human behavior, shine through in ways that are combative, conquering, and victorious.
Stone was recently honored as the “Global Citizen of the Year” by the United Nations Correspondents Association, presented by the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Stone’s paintings exude a raw and spontaneously expressive quality, resulting from a shifting alchemy of chaos and structure. An expression of the feminine that is deeply in touch with natural forces and fundamentally untamable
says Dr. Martin Oskar Kramer, Art Historian at Galerie Deschler (Ph.D., Princeton University).
Her works express incessant and inevitable transformation. Many of the recurring elements and symbols in her paintings signify change, flow and metamorphosis. Snakes and rivers appear frequently – sometimes figuratively, or abstracted into undulating shapes and lines. Snakes, with their regular shedding of skin, are a symbol of constant transformation. Rivers, with their flowing currents of water, are a classic sign of continuous change underneath the illusion of stability
Stone is internationally recognized as a global cultural leader, her many honors include: the Women Making History Award from the National Women’s History Museum; the Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award; the Nobel Peace Summit Award Laureate; the Golden Globe Award; a Primetime Emmy Award; an Academy Award Nomination; she was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; the 2023 Courage Award; the Harvard Humanitarian Award; and the Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian Award, among her many accolades. She is a New York Times bestselling author of her recent book The Beauty of Living Twice.
Sharon Stone: Totem – 18th May 2024,
Galerie Deschler
