Matthias Mansen
29 Aug - 05 Sep 2015
MATTHIAS MANSEN
Potsdamer Straße
29 August - 5 September 2015
Berlin – Aurel Scheibler gives Wolfgang Wittrock CARTE BLANCHE for the exhibition: Matthias Mansen - Potsdamer Straße
This is the first presentation of Matthias Mansen’s new woodcuts, made in Berlin between 2011 and 2015. The geographical coincidence is striking: Matthias Mansen’s studio as the production site (Am Karlsbad), the venue of the presentation at Galerie Aurel Scheibler (Schöneberger Ufer), and Mansen’s source of inspiration Potsdamer Straße are all in close proximity to one another.
Carving motifs into the printing blocks involves working against resistance. Each motif requires a new engagement with the material and the form that is to be brought about. That is the essence of Mansen’s art: creating abstract grid structures that form an image in the eyes of the beholder. His current series deals with Potsdamer Straße, where he now feels very much at home. “Things have to become so familiar to me that they become insignificant. It is only then that I can work with them.” This also applies to the view from his studio, an old factory façade. Countless circular grooves let an image emerge from the wooden surface. Or as Mansen puts it, “I don’t cut lines, I cut light.” (Henni Kristin Wiedemann, Berlin)
Matthias Mansen was born in Ravensburg in 1958. After studying painting at Karlsruhe’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste from 1978 to 1984, he turned almost exclusively to the medium of woodcut. Mansen is not interested in reproducing existing motifs or images, but rather in developing complex pictures in a great number of variants. His serial explorations of motifs update a traditional medium – the woodcut – and traditional genres such as the landscape. A picture emerges before the eye of the beholder that always also refers to the conditions of its creation – fragments of reality, consisting of light and shade.
Matthias Mansen’s work has won numerous prizes, among them the Kunstpreis Junger Westen Recklinghausen. Comprehensive monographic exhibitions of his work have been held in Germany and around the world: Work in Progress, Cabinets d‘arts graphiques, Musée d‘Art et d‘Histoire, Geneva (2012/13); Land und See, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2007); Editionen, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2001); About The House, Städtische Galerie im Spendhaus Reutlingen, Kunstverein Göttingen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachussetts (1996– 98). Currently, works by (Matthias) Mansen are on view at the exhibition „ich bin eine Pflanze, Naturprozesse in der Kunst“, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg.
His work is also featured in the collections of institutions such as Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Hamburger Kunsthalle; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
In 2014, Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was able to acquire a triptych from the series „Potsdamer Straße“ (2012) for its permanent collection with support from the city of Berlin, Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs.
Potsdamer Straße
29 August - 5 September 2015
Berlin – Aurel Scheibler gives Wolfgang Wittrock CARTE BLANCHE for the exhibition: Matthias Mansen - Potsdamer Straße
This is the first presentation of Matthias Mansen’s new woodcuts, made in Berlin between 2011 and 2015. The geographical coincidence is striking: Matthias Mansen’s studio as the production site (Am Karlsbad), the venue of the presentation at Galerie Aurel Scheibler (Schöneberger Ufer), and Mansen’s source of inspiration Potsdamer Straße are all in close proximity to one another.
Carving motifs into the printing blocks involves working against resistance. Each motif requires a new engagement with the material and the form that is to be brought about. That is the essence of Mansen’s art: creating abstract grid structures that form an image in the eyes of the beholder. His current series deals with Potsdamer Straße, where he now feels very much at home. “Things have to become so familiar to me that they become insignificant. It is only then that I can work with them.” This also applies to the view from his studio, an old factory façade. Countless circular grooves let an image emerge from the wooden surface. Or as Mansen puts it, “I don’t cut lines, I cut light.” (Henni Kristin Wiedemann, Berlin)
Matthias Mansen was born in Ravensburg in 1958. After studying painting at Karlsruhe’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste from 1978 to 1984, he turned almost exclusively to the medium of woodcut. Mansen is not interested in reproducing existing motifs or images, but rather in developing complex pictures in a great number of variants. His serial explorations of motifs update a traditional medium – the woodcut – and traditional genres such as the landscape. A picture emerges before the eye of the beholder that always also refers to the conditions of its creation – fragments of reality, consisting of light and shade.
Matthias Mansen’s work has won numerous prizes, among them the Kunstpreis Junger Westen Recklinghausen. Comprehensive monographic exhibitions of his work have been held in Germany and around the world: Work in Progress, Cabinets d‘arts graphiques, Musée d‘Art et d‘Histoire, Geneva (2012/13); Land und See, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (2007); Editionen, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2001); About The House, Städtische Galerie im Spendhaus Reutlingen, Kunstverein Göttingen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachussetts (1996– 98). Currently, works by (Matthias) Mansen are on view at the exhibition „ich bin eine Pflanze, Naturprozesse in der Kunst“, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg.
His work is also featured in the collections of institutions such as Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Hamburger Kunsthalle; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
In 2014, Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was able to acquire a triptych from the series „Potsdamer Straße“ (2012) for its permanent collection with support from the city of Berlin, Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs.