Johannes Wald
18 Mar - 23 Apr 2011
© Johannes Wald
Verlorene Form (5 attempts of giving shape to a dim feeling), 2011
Gips, Stahl
175 x 200 x 100 cm
Verlorene Form (5 attempts of giving shape to a dim feeling), 2011
Gips, Stahl
175 x 200 x 100 cm
JOHANNES WALD
18 March - 23 April, 2011
Konrad Fischer Galerie Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of Johannes Wald's first solo exhibition. In his most recent works Wald (born 1980) explores the relationship between form, language and meaning.
Seven bars, each emanating from a cone shape and cast out of bronze build the work "presentiment, notion, agglomeration, reconsideration, doubt, confidence and devotion cast in bronze". The bars and cone shapes are casts from channels and cones through which the liquid metal is poured into the foundry mold. While the cones and channels themselves suggest many possible forms which could be realized, the title of the work absurdly ascribes a meaning to each channel.
The theoretical blind spot of the cast channels becomes rather literal in the work ‚Pedestal for a Muse’. The viewer is invited to fill an empty couch with his own vision of an ideal muse. Similar to this but completely based on language are two text pieces titled ‚Ekphrasis’ which challenge the imagination of the viewer. As suggested by the title the works are detailed descriptions of sculptures which succeed in different ways to express emotional content and liveliness of form. According to the artist, this kind of expression seems to only be possible through language, clearly marking one of the constant characteristics of Wald’s work. Doubting the potential of sculpture to express certain feelings or complex ideas in any appropriate way, Wald does not consider his works, language-based or three-dimensional, as sculpture but rather as replacements or approximations revealing the artist’s desire for an ideal and emotional art.
The first piece that one sees upon entering the exhibition is an unimposing work - a single sheet in a wooden frame hanging on a huge wall. Only with a closer look is one able to see the name of the artist and the word ‚sculptor’ underneath, both unprinted, the letters are only embossed. Language, made three-dimensional through relief printing, appears as a legitimate tool of sculpture. The timid addition to the name of the artist suggests doubts about the validity of his own work as sculpture while at the same time revealing a strong desire to work within the realms of this classical genre.
18 March - 23 April, 2011
Konrad Fischer Galerie Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of Johannes Wald's first solo exhibition. In his most recent works Wald (born 1980) explores the relationship between form, language and meaning.
Seven bars, each emanating from a cone shape and cast out of bronze build the work "presentiment, notion, agglomeration, reconsideration, doubt, confidence and devotion cast in bronze". The bars and cone shapes are casts from channels and cones through which the liquid metal is poured into the foundry mold. While the cones and channels themselves suggest many possible forms which could be realized, the title of the work absurdly ascribes a meaning to each channel.
The theoretical blind spot of the cast channels becomes rather literal in the work ‚Pedestal for a Muse’. The viewer is invited to fill an empty couch with his own vision of an ideal muse. Similar to this but completely based on language are two text pieces titled ‚Ekphrasis’ which challenge the imagination of the viewer. As suggested by the title the works are detailed descriptions of sculptures which succeed in different ways to express emotional content and liveliness of form. According to the artist, this kind of expression seems to only be possible through language, clearly marking one of the constant characteristics of Wald’s work. Doubting the potential of sculpture to express certain feelings or complex ideas in any appropriate way, Wald does not consider his works, language-based or three-dimensional, as sculpture but rather as replacements or approximations revealing the artist’s desire for an ideal and emotional art.
The first piece that one sees upon entering the exhibition is an unimposing work - a single sheet in a wooden frame hanging on a huge wall. Only with a closer look is one able to see the name of the artist and the word ‚sculptor’ underneath, both unprinted, the letters are only embossed. Language, made three-dimensional through relief printing, appears as a legitimate tool of sculpture. The timid addition to the name of the artist suggests doubts about the validity of his own work as sculpture while at the same time revealing a strong desire to work within the realms of this classical genre.