Buchmann

Wilhelm Mundt

20 Mar - 25 Apr 2009

© Wilhelm Mundt
Trashstone 412, 2008
Produktionsrückstände in GfK/
Production waste, fibre glass
170 (h) x 180 x 320 cm
WILHELM MUNDT

March 20 – April 25, 2009

The Buchmann Galerie is pleased to present the second solo exhibition in Berlin by Wilhelm Mundt (b. 1959).
The focus of the exhibition is the overwhelming Trashstone 412, which weighs a thousand kilos and is being presented in a gallery for the first time, having been shown at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. It is the largest sculpture thus far in his Trashstones series.
Wilhelm Mundt began the Trashstones series in 1989 with Stein 001, and the series reveals the artist to be a personality who reflects on the traditions of sculpture and the conventions of modernism (and its breaks with the tradition of form) while at the same time renewing it by permeating it with intellect and artisanship.
Wilhelm Mundt considers established arrangements and sequences of production as well as industrial processes, placing them in an artistic context with formal inventions that are dependent on function. Consequently, the production of a sculpture follows a principle the artist has instituted in which one sculpture leads metaphorically to the next, which is made clear by numbering them chronologically. Thus a previous sculpture and a subsequent one are always determined numerically.
The films and photographs that he produces in parallel with his sculptural oeuvre represent the second focus of the exhibition, and they bring together the many connections in Wilhelm Mundt’s work, as is the case with the photograph of the asteroid Mathilde.
Particularly impressive is the video 3-Felder Wirtschaft (Three-field crop rotation), shown here for the first time, in which the artist ecstatically recites the text “Karoffeln, Rüben, Mais, Weizen, Roggen” (Potatoes, turnips, corn, wheat, rye) while driving in a car across expansive landscapes.
Wilhelm Mundt often sees artistic creation as a performance, which in some of his works is even staged, as is the case in the performance in which he drew the ultimate consequence by packing himself within a work conceived as a perpetual motion machine into a trashstone.
In 2007 Wilhelm Mundt’s work was honored by the Royal Academy in London with the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture.
For additional information on the artist or for visual materials on the works in the exhibition, please do not hesitate to contact the gallery at any time. press@buchmanngalerie.com
 

Tags: Wilhelm Mundt