THE POETIC OBJECT

THE POETIC OBJECT

4 September – 2 October 2020
Joint opening for DC Open Friday, 4 September 2020, 11 am – 10 pm
www.dc-open.de

SCHÖNEWALD is pleased to present the exhibition THE POETIC OBJECT in conjunction with this year’s DC Open. The exhibition brings together works by Otto Boll, Katharina Fritsch, Karin Kneffel, C. O. Paeffgen, Andreas Schmitten, Thomas Schütte, and Al Taylor.

For Al Taylor, object and drawing are closely interconnected: Drawings are spatially structured, and objects are often connected quasi graphically with thin wires. His aim was to continually expand the spectrum of the visual, whereby domestic materials such as tin cans and wires play a major role. Yet it is precisely these simple things that are poetically charged in his artistic universe, at times to the point of echoing Surrealism.

Like Taylor, C. O. Paeffgen repeatedly worked with found objects, such as the pink children’s wallet, which he transformed into a pictorial object with a colourful sequence of letters. Or he created a nocturnal landscape that consists merely of a piece of string and a star punched out of a silver background. Paeffgen was a magician of simple things; his pictorial inventions make do with the smallest of means, and it is precisely from this that they develop their lasting effect.

In contrast, Katharina Fritsch always works with specially designed, highly stylised objects, the poetics of which are sparked solely by form and colour. Her sculptural duo Hexenhaus und Pilz (Witch’s House and Mushroom) clearly recalls the fairy-tale world of the Brothers Grimm; at the same time, however, this memory is absorbed by the extremely cool appearance of the ensemble. Her various Stilleben (Still Lifes) are characterised by the fact that, contrary to the traditional concept of the genre, human figures are also included: For example, the bust of a young man, a skeleton hand, and a shell shape are brought together like a picture puzzle.

A penchant for the mysterious can also be discerned in the works of Andreas Schmitten, who often composes his poetic objects into large-format picture boxes. In doing so, he occasionally charges concepts and themes with psychological components that are capable of lastingly captivating the exegetic imagination. As with Al Taylor, one of the roots of Andreas Schmitten’s design lies in Surrealism.

Karin Kneffel often shifts levels of reality in the painterly depiction of everyday objects. In the process, ordinary things lose their gravity: They begin to float freely in space, twining with raindrops and reflections. In this way, the artist creates parallel worlds that we recognise, but the order of which contradicts lived experience. Kneffel’s still lifes are simultaneously magical and realistic.

Thomas Schütte’s poetic inspirations are not bound to a specific medium. When he paints chailce-shaped flowers on a black background, for example, these forms appear so independent that one can undoubtedly speak of objects. Conversely, his ceramic objects with their flowing surfaces preserve something of the magic of painted colour. Schütte’s poetic forms can be constantly rediscovered; they are by their very nature open and therefore always on the way to other possible interpretations.

Finally, this also applies in a broader sense to the filigree objects by Otto Boll. As figurations made of aluminium and steel, they are unalterable material facts; in contrast, their polymorphism in visual space is almost limitless. Depending on the viewer’s perspective, these objects take on ever new forms. If one were to trace their appearance, a bundle of strokes would unexpectedly emerge, which is, in principle, impossible to complete.

Otto Boll
Katharina Fritsch
Karin Kneffel
C.O. Paeffgen
Andreas Schmitten
Thomas Schütte
Al Taylor

curated by Dr. Martin Hentschel