Wolfgang Betke
06 Jul - 07 Sep 2013
© Wolfgang Betke
Paravent, 2013
Acryl and permanent marker on aluminium, mounted on wooden panel
5 panels, each of them 207 x 125 cm (81 1/2 x 49 1/5 in.)
(Front)
Photo: Nick Ash
Paravent, 2013
Acryl and permanent marker on aluminium, mounted on wooden panel
5 panels, each of them 207 x 125 cm (81 1/2 x 49 1/5 in.)
(Front)
Photo: Nick Ash
WOLFGANG BETKE
OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG
6 July - 7 September 13
Berlin – Aurel Scheibler announces „OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ (“Surface Depth”), a solo exhibition of works by Wolfgang Betke (b. 1958). „OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ shows recent work by the artist and emphasizes Betke’s determined and continuous focus on the artistic process itself, the ‘becoming’ of a work of art. The exhibition runs from July 6 until September 7 and opens on Friday July 5.
Canvas, aluminium and wood are the essential materials that support Betke’s oeuvre. His objects are finely multi-layered, they accept and reflect manipulation and their transformed states of being reveal new realities, which are unpredictable from the outset and open up the viewer’s gaze to multiple modes of seeing and meaning, all at once.
„OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ presents at its center a formidable five-fold screen, executed with mixed media and abrasion on aluminium, mounted on wooden panel. The work not only testifies to Betke’s extremely advanced skill in handling this unusual medium, it also provides the viewer with a marvelous opportunity to grasp and be mesmerized by the opulent qualities of reflection, optical illusion and light-sensitivity that are being displayed. Here is a work in which the act of becoming will never be finalized. With every move from the viewer, with every infinitesimal change of the surrounding light, the screen completely transforms its being. As if artist and medium, viewer and setting are forever united in the solving and dissolving of its meaning.
Betke accepts, invites even, the stage of ‘not-knowing’, which is an essential condition for the first renderings on the canvas or aluminium and subsequently stretches over the many phases of elimination/application that follow in sheer unforeseeable numbers, until the image that has formed itself in the process – the image that has become – is at ease, is, for no particular reason, ‘right’. It is exactly this allowing himself to be in an intensely exploratory, intensely searching, intensely committed state that leads Betke to create his own palimpsests.
Wolfgang Betke studied philosophy and art history at the University in Hamburg and fine arts with Franz Erhard Walther at the Art Academy, also in Hamburg. His work is represented in German and international foundations and collections. Betke lives and works in Berlin as a painter, poet and performance artist.
OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG
6 July - 7 September 13
Berlin – Aurel Scheibler announces „OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ (“Surface Depth”), a solo exhibition of works by Wolfgang Betke (b. 1958). „OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ shows recent work by the artist and emphasizes Betke’s determined and continuous focus on the artistic process itself, the ‘becoming’ of a work of art. The exhibition runs from July 6 until September 7 and opens on Friday July 5.
Canvas, aluminium and wood are the essential materials that support Betke’s oeuvre. His objects are finely multi-layered, they accept and reflect manipulation and their transformed states of being reveal new realities, which are unpredictable from the outset and open up the viewer’s gaze to multiple modes of seeing and meaning, all at once.
„OBERFLÄCHENTIEFGANG“ presents at its center a formidable five-fold screen, executed with mixed media and abrasion on aluminium, mounted on wooden panel. The work not only testifies to Betke’s extremely advanced skill in handling this unusual medium, it also provides the viewer with a marvelous opportunity to grasp and be mesmerized by the opulent qualities of reflection, optical illusion and light-sensitivity that are being displayed. Here is a work in which the act of becoming will never be finalized. With every move from the viewer, with every infinitesimal change of the surrounding light, the screen completely transforms its being. As if artist and medium, viewer and setting are forever united in the solving and dissolving of its meaning.
Betke accepts, invites even, the stage of ‘not-knowing’, which is an essential condition for the first renderings on the canvas or aluminium and subsequently stretches over the many phases of elimination/application that follow in sheer unforeseeable numbers, until the image that has formed itself in the process – the image that has become – is at ease, is, for no particular reason, ‘right’. It is exactly this allowing himself to be in an intensely exploratory, intensely searching, intensely committed state that leads Betke to create his own palimpsests.
Wolfgang Betke studied philosophy and art history at the University in Hamburg and fine arts with Franz Erhard Walther at the Art Academy, also in Hamburg. His work is represented in German and international foundations and collections. Betke lives and works in Berlin as a painter, poet and performance artist.