Tobias Hantmann
07 Nov - 20 Dec 2014
TOBIAS HANTMANN
Licht an, Körper
7 November – 20 December 2014
We are delighted to present Tobias Hantmann’s forth solo exhibition in our gallery. As with his 2011 exhibition titled Pistill der Iris (pestle of the iris), this new series of works will again be shown for the very first time in our gallery in Innsbruck.
Asked about how the drawings or paintings on monochrome velour carpets came about, Hantmann recently revealed in an interview:
“... I hadn’t actually planned to directly use the material for my work, but rather imagined that the velour piece would make a good sketch board on a wall in the studio: quick to draw on, and quick to erase. But then it became obvious how the appearance of this kind of screen clearly differed from all my other works. That alone would probably not have been interesting enough. What was special, however, was the fact that this unknown medium allowed me to directly translate much of what I was engaging myself with at the time in the field of painting.”
Since the year 2006, Tobias Hantmann has repeatedly found himself in the following situation: He prepares a piece of velour fabric or velour carpet as a screen in order to paint on or in this surface. However, rather than applying another material, the soft fibers of the velour are aligned in a way that the resulting nuances of light and shade generate the image.
Due to the specific – and perhaps somewhat strange – conditions the formulations inscribed in the material seem like occurrences whose degree of reality cannot be clearly determined. The real light illuminating the shimmering screen smoothly merges into the depicted light of the image.
Hantmann uses different pictorial sources for his velour images: initially he picked up on tried and tested graphic designs from his previous works, before adding volume to the plotted frames and transforming them into compositions of piled cooking pots. Photographs of his studio, taken in complete darkness and illuminated using harsh flash, followed. Created in a similar manner, the drafts for the series of manger images were conflated with extensive geometric compositions in the artist’s last exhibition.
Licht an, Körper
(Light on, body)
The current images show fragmental views of human bodies.
The selected details leave the body parts, acts and gestures torn out of context. As Tobias Hantmann explains, he has combined two sources for this series: stills of pornographic films and photographs of figures by George Segal.
The focus on the plastic character of the body shape pushes back the objective, the purpose or the significance of the act itself, making way for: hands, skin, gleam, wrinkles, uncontrolled touch, volume, bumps, squeezing and being squeezed, stroking and groping.
Segal’s direct impressions of human bodies were not used as moulds, but the plaster shells themselves, with all the traces of the craft process, became the final exhibits. Segal combined the mostly white figures with everyday objects and scenic props. The plaster bodies meet colored objects. This creates the effect of blank spaces within the colored setting. In later works, Segal decided to also color the figures themselves.
It seems that for Tobias Hantmann it is precisely this aspect that is directly related to his own situation, as he begins to color the contents and forms of the image in the exact moment he transfers them into the monochromatic surface of his medium.
Segal’s work resembled that of a film director. His space is an often black stage, orchestrated by means of dramatic lighting. Hantmann’s images are physically tangible structures; when grasping the screen, they point to a sphere beyond actual space. All depictions are subject to the conditions immanent to the image. Hantmann’s stage is not the space in the gallery, but the imaginary space beyond the walls that becomes accessible through the serial sequence of the works. Equably they break through the self-contained definition of space without creating a coherent imagery. The fragments, which appear to be seen through colored filters, differ in their variable distance to the bodies, their variation of perspectives, their degree of detail and the way they are presented.
The appearance of the bodies and their artistic transformation thus hardly allow for any inferences to be drawn about the sources of the images. The surfaces of the plastics appear to come to life through the evanescence of the lighting (and the photographic exposure?). The interactions of the animated bodies seem direct, deliberately unstaged and laconic – bodies that clash.
Licht an, Körper
7 November – 20 December 2014
We are delighted to present Tobias Hantmann’s forth solo exhibition in our gallery. As with his 2011 exhibition titled Pistill der Iris (pestle of the iris), this new series of works will again be shown for the very first time in our gallery in Innsbruck.
Asked about how the drawings or paintings on monochrome velour carpets came about, Hantmann recently revealed in an interview:
“... I hadn’t actually planned to directly use the material for my work, but rather imagined that the velour piece would make a good sketch board on a wall in the studio: quick to draw on, and quick to erase. But then it became obvious how the appearance of this kind of screen clearly differed from all my other works. That alone would probably not have been interesting enough. What was special, however, was the fact that this unknown medium allowed me to directly translate much of what I was engaging myself with at the time in the field of painting.”
Since the year 2006, Tobias Hantmann has repeatedly found himself in the following situation: He prepares a piece of velour fabric or velour carpet as a screen in order to paint on or in this surface. However, rather than applying another material, the soft fibers of the velour are aligned in a way that the resulting nuances of light and shade generate the image.
Due to the specific – and perhaps somewhat strange – conditions the formulations inscribed in the material seem like occurrences whose degree of reality cannot be clearly determined. The real light illuminating the shimmering screen smoothly merges into the depicted light of the image.
Hantmann uses different pictorial sources for his velour images: initially he picked up on tried and tested graphic designs from his previous works, before adding volume to the plotted frames and transforming them into compositions of piled cooking pots. Photographs of his studio, taken in complete darkness and illuminated using harsh flash, followed. Created in a similar manner, the drafts for the series of manger images were conflated with extensive geometric compositions in the artist’s last exhibition.
Licht an, Körper
(Light on, body)
The current images show fragmental views of human bodies.
The selected details leave the body parts, acts and gestures torn out of context. As Tobias Hantmann explains, he has combined two sources for this series: stills of pornographic films and photographs of figures by George Segal.
The focus on the plastic character of the body shape pushes back the objective, the purpose or the significance of the act itself, making way for: hands, skin, gleam, wrinkles, uncontrolled touch, volume, bumps, squeezing and being squeezed, stroking and groping.
Segal’s direct impressions of human bodies were not used as moulds, but the plaster shells themselves, with all the traces of the craft process, became the final exhibits. Segal combined the mostly white figures with everyday objects and scenic props. The plaster bodies meet colored objects. This creates the effect of blank spaces within the colored setting. In later works, Segal decided to also color the figures themselves.
It seems that for Tobias Hantmann it is precisely this aspect that is directly related to his own situation, as he begins to color the contents and forms of the image in the exact moment he transfers them into the monochromatic surface of his medium.
Segal’s work resembled that of a film director. His space is an often black stage, orchestrated by means of dramatic lighting. Hantmann’s images are physically tangible structures; when grasping the screen, they point to a sphere beyond actual space. All depictions are subject to the conditions immanent to the image. Hantmann’s stage is not the space in the gallery, but the imaginary space beyond the walls that becomes accessible through the serial sequence of the works. Equably they break through the self-contained definition of space without creating a coherent imagery. The fragments, which appear to be seen through colored filters, differ in their variable distance to the bodies, their variation of perspectives, their degree of detail and the way they are presented.
The appearance of the bodies and their artistic transformation thus hardly allow for any inferences to be drawn about the sources of the images. The surfaces of the plastics appear to come to life through the evanescence of the lighting (and the photographic exposure?). The interactions of the animated bodies seem direct, deliberately unstaged and laconic – bodies that clash.