Wolfgang Kaiser
20 Apr - 26 May 2007
WOLFGANG KAISER
›not guilty‹
With this show of works by Wolfgang Kaiser, the gallery is once again featuring a Munich artist from the younger generation. Kaiser’s works are not created in the studio; he prefers the outdoors as a setting for his artistic practice. Both in Munich as well as at remote sites in places such as Croatia, the Azores, or Vietnam, he installs objects that seem oddly displaced and strange in the selected environment. He occupies the site with a troubling moment, smuggles an alien reality into the surrounding reality. The works remain on-site, while Kaiser simply takes a photograph with him as proof of his activity. These photos are mounted in light boxes, so that the scenes left behind are presented as if in a shop window.
We will be showing new works in our exhibition. Selected sites are now stages for absurdities: a jacket on the edge of a road, water flowing from its inside; a blonde wig on a stick, facing the ocean; white boots, suitcases, and books in a foggy landscape. The desire for disturbance remains, although the clear confrontation of irreconcilable facts, however, gives way to a narrative open-endedness. At its center is the human being as prosthesis and puppet, an absentee present in the relicts left behind.
The installations by Wolfgang Kaiser - a former student of Stephan Balkenhol’s - are also always explorations of sculpture. He is interested in the possibilities offered by experimental creation and their various effects in the installation. Besides objects that are employed in his outdoor works, he also makes sculptures of heads by foaming polyurethane into rubber masks, the type commonly found in costume shops. Kaiser allows the material to develop its own dynamic. Coincidence decides its ultimate appearance. In his installations at the gallery, he tests their effect in changing constellations and meanings. Sometimes they function as colorful objects, some-
times as human beings. For our exhibition, he has created a gilded version that serves as the final form, for now at least.
›not guilty‹
With this show of works by Wolfgang Kaiser, the gallery is once again featuring a Munich artist from the younger generation. Kaiser’s works are not created in the studio; he prefers the outdoors as a setting for his artistic practice. Both in Munich as well as at remote sites in places such as Croatia, the Azores, or Vietnam, he installs objects that seem oddly displaced and strange in the selected environment. He occupies the site with a troubling moment, smuggles an alien reality into the surrounding reality. The works remain on-site, while Kaiser simply takes a photograph with him as proof of his activity. These photos are mounted in light boxes, so that the scenes left behind are presented as if in a shop window.
We will be showing new works in our exhibition. Selected sites are now stages for absurdities: a jacket on the edge of a road, water flowing from its inside; a blonde wig on a stick, facing the ocean; white boots, suitcases, and books in a foggy landscape. The desire for disturbance remains, although the clear confrontation of irreconcilable facts, however, gives way to a narrative open-endedness. At its center is the human being as prosthesis and puppet, an absentee present in the relicts left behind.
The installations by Wolfgang Kaiser - a former student of Stephan Balkenhol’s - are also always explorations of sculpture. He is interested in the possibilities offered by experimental creation and their various effects in the installation. Besides objects that are employed in his outdoor works, he also makes sculptures of heads by foaming polyurethane into rubber masks, the type commonly found in costume shops. Kaiser allows the material to develop its own dynamic. Coincidence decides its ultimate appearance. In his installations at the gallery, he tests their effect in changing constellations and meanings. Sometimes they function as colorful objects, some-
times as human beings. For our exhibition, he has created a gilded version that serves as the final form, for now at least.