Alexandra Deutsch / Stefan Saffer / Reinhold Wöllmer / Tilmann Zahn

Opening: Thursday, May 3rd 2012, 7 PM
Exhibition: May 4th – June 16th 2012

Alexandra Deutsch could be called a „paper-sculptor”. As ground mass for her objects, Deutsch uses paperpulp and scoops it thickly, so that the paper – although a fragile and vulnerable material – becomes resilient and durable. Deutsch’s objects appear alien and familiar alike, they remind the spectator of simple organisms, plants and sea-creatures, but on the other side not entirely – something is different, something is off – they evade categorisation. Even though they may seem like organisms, they are abstract and speak their own artistic language. The forms look organic, like they have grown and appear to have gone through a long process of maturing. This is due to the long creative process, in which ideas of color and form condense within a material dialog.

Stefan Saffer’s „Cut-Outs“ are what their name implies: something cut out. The artist designs, draws and „paints“ the lines and shapes of abstract compositions, which can also mutate into text-fragments or take on figurative borrowings. The process of „design“, goes on: Safer cuts into the bland quality of the used paper or cardboard, refines the shapes with a cutter, but not entirely: The first drafts get reevaluated and can stay if they fit – or otherwise they are cropped radically. Under these circumstances it’s not a „cut-out“, rather a „cut-in“, the intentionally left-overs of paper. Only these parts, that stay can be viewed by the spectator for later interpretations. Addingly, Saffer drapes several cuttings on top of each other (only some are left on their own), using fine needles and therefore the objects are not placed onto the wall but before it. Stefan Saffer knowingly describes his works as „cut-out drawings with shadows on the walls“. Those aforementioned shadows form the final stage of Saffer’s method of creation.

Reinhard Wöllmer started out as a painter, or rather, the specific workings of color were always his main concern. The development of spatial and three dimensional elements have always been important in his work, however. He embraces the movement of the spectator and works with vital, ever-changing color effects, created through light and shadow. His pieces are an approach of two ways of working which have run parallel in the past – the graphic-linear and the painterly. Wöllmer doesn’t treat either one in a classic manner, the three-dimensional always plays an important role. He doesn’t apply paint – he mixes pigment directly into his paper-compound, rolls it, presses and curves it, and creates color-objects, which results in bright and dark tones through layering, curving and depth. Wöllmer concentrates on formal aspects of the circle and the sphere and their overlapping and questioning through linear structures – consciously renouncing the specific value of color.

Tilmann Zahn seeks out locales avoided by others: The shabby and inhospitable dark sides of the gliitering world of consumer society. His path takes him to freight depots, industrial parks, loading stations; to places where wares are manufactured and distributed, in bulk and in containers encrusted with the grime of travel and the sweat of physical work. Zahn‘s tool-like forms are symbols of lost, inaccessible knowledge. This touches on a social reality: The individual participates only fragmentarily in the knowledge of his time; new knowledge is constantly won, old knowledge lost. In Tilmann Zahn‘s work, the tool whose function has been lost is like a key without a door. The lock to which the key belongs can at best be imagined and with it, innumerable possible spaces of thought and imagination. It is as if Tilmann Zahn‘s paintings opened up an extremely sensitive space with a pair of rusty pliers.

(Excerpts: Alexandra Deutsch: Isolde Schmidt/Ulrike Hauser-Suida; Stefan Saffer: Susanne Neubauer; Reinhard Wöllmer: Heidi Bierwisch; Tilmann Zahn: Alice Henkes)