WENTRUP AM FEENTEICH

In the garden, new sculptures by Nevin Aladag, and Gregor Hildebrandt are on display together with works by Olaf Metzel, Gerold Miller, and David Renggli.

Olaf Metzel portrays our time, shapes it, illuminates current topics, and stimulates reflection on current socio-cultural issues. For him, provocation as a thought-provoking element is an essential part of his art. His interest in architecture, its social relevance, and sculptural qualities are evident in "béton brut" and "Palais Bulles." The free-standing sculpture in the garden of the villa refers to concrete architecture from Eastern Europe to Brazil, while the wall relief "Palais Bulles" in the interior contrasts not only in color but also in content by referring to the space-age architecture of the 1970s.

John McAllister's paintings exude a kind of obsession with the spectral qualities of light and the attempt to bring them to the canvas. With a vibrant palette focused on a specific range, he has succeeded in finding a distinctive, visually lush painting style.

The colorful landscapes, interiors, and still lifes are inspired by Post-Impressionist moments, traditional Japanese painting, and early analog photography. They are reminiscent of works by Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, and Georges Braque. In the large-scale paintings and panoramas, the artist turns traditional perspective on its head with the dualism of flat picture surface and illusionistic depth. He carefully stages a paradise from his mental impressions, in which he transcends the category of nature in his own unique way. He skillfully plays with the illusion of three-dimensionality, with bright colors and decorative patterns predominating to reinforce the flat effect of the picture surface.

In Nevin Aladag's extensive body of work, which includes sculpture, performance, and film, the artist addresses questions of borders and boundaries, often in the context of identity constructions.

In "Social Fabrics," collages of carpets, a wide field of associations, and references open up. Hybrid reliefs are created from set-pieces of industrially or handcrafted kilims, silk, wool, and sisal carpets. They unite the seemingly contradictory aesthetics of different rugs from numerous countries of origin.

Gregor Hildebrandt is primarily concerned with concepts of the cross-media transfer of music and poetry into the visual arts. His source materials are usually analog recording mediums, such as cassette and videotapes, and vinyl records. He processes those storage media that have become almost obsolete before transforming them into sculptures, paintings, photographs, and often room-sized installations.

For the artist, sound, especially on a storage medium, whether in the form of music or the spoken word, represents an artistic medium that allows him to add another "invisible" dimension to his works. This play with perception is an essential feature of his work.

In his "Desire Paintings," David Renggli paints on two levels, in the foreground on a jute or coconut fiber net, in the background on a wooden panel. As motifs, floor plans of apartments, Venetian gondolas, and implied sculptures emerge. The overlapping of the graphically indicated motifs in the foreground with the detailed motifs in the background creates new worlds of images and colors that change slightly depending on the viewer's point of view.

Thomas Wachholz's work deals with the cultural artifact of the matchbox on both a conceptual and painterly level. Starting from his matchbox collection, Thomas Wachholz deals with the found image and color worlds and their compositions. He develops them further to a point where they become independent from the original templates and turn into independent painterly subjects. In the process, a new, abstract repertoire of colors and forms emerges, which the artist repeatedly samples and condenses into new compositions.

The motivic world of Sophie von Hellermann's paintings is reminiscent of fables, legends, and traditional stories, infused with the workings of her subconscious rather than the content of existing images. Her romantic, pastel canvases and watercolors are often presented to suggest complex narrative threads. The artist references current events as often and fluidly as she borrows from classical mythology and literature imagery to create expansive imaginary places.

Sophie von Hellermann has drawn inspiration from the fairy pond behind the house to create an associative series of paintings in her new watercolors. One of the watercolors in this series also served as a template for the limited edition rug made in cooperation with M2Rugs.

Gerold Miller's artistic practice addresses the relationship between imaginability and visibility, between geometric unambiguity and visual ambiguity. Major influences here come from the Hard Edge painting of the American West Coast, the experiments of the Italian Zero movement, and the Neo-Geo movement of the 1980s.

In the formally reduced "instant visions," wall sculptures made of aluminum and lacquer, the artist explores the sensitive area where space turns into surface and figuration becomes an abstraction. The centrifugal movement of rotating circles replaces spatial perspectives. The objects show surfaces without depth, fast, beautiful, but also hard and precise.

Thomas Grünfeld's sculptural work is characterized by the use of unusual materials and complex allusions to content. As hybrid artifacts, his works often oscillate between commodity and art object, furniture and sculpture, panel painting, and room decoration. They elude conventional generic terms as well as a strictly analytical approach. In an interplay between attraction and rejection, they release feelings, memories, and associations.

Jan-Ole Schiemann's pictorial worlds are populated by motifs that move through the paintings like shadowy, humorous caricatures. His compositions are characterized by breaks, turning the graphic lines inside out and interlocking them in an organic structure. In the creation process, outlines, lines, and planes - like a vibrating rhythm - constantly write themselves in their automatic writing or drawing processes.

Photos: Patricia Parinejad

Partner: Caparol Icons – Freifrau – Iguzzini – Man of Parts – M2Rugs – Pulpo – Wittmann

Selected Press

Handelsblatt, 20. August 2021

Monopol, 20. August 2021

Wallpaper, 21. August 2021

Widewalls, 24. August 2021

Hamburger Abendblatt, 25. August 2021

Tagesspiegel, 28. August 2021

The Spaces, 22 September 2021

Ideat, Nov/Dez 2021