Andreas Slominski
25 May - 18 Sep 2010
ANDREAS SLOMINSKI
25 May until 18 September 2010
In this major solo exhibition, the Goetz Collection presents about 30 works by Andreas Slominski from the past 15 years. His oeuvre is characterised by a conceptual approach and includes pictures, sculptures and performantive works, many of which reference everyday objects and place them in new contexts.
Slominski came to international attention with the Traps that have been a mainstay of his work since the mid-1980s. The exhibition begins with his Rattenfalle (1998), Trap for Birds of Prey (1999) and Vogelfalle (2000). Both as a mechanical object and as a metaphor, the trap functions through enticement: the bait prompts a temporary abandonment of caution. Then, the trap snaps shut, causing a sudden physical, emotional or intellectual encounter. Contact with the trap generates a highly charged moment of human emotions. It embodies power, deception and violence as well as slyness and deceit.
Slominski‘s art is beguiling. It lures the viewer with the bait of habitual perception. It dazzles us and forces us to look at things more closely. The artist plays with insinuations, meanings and preconceived connotations, often leaving the viewer with a sense of having been „caught out“ and sometimes even feeling like a „victim“.
Another important aspect of Slominski’s work involves windmills of various kinds. Four of these can be seen in the exhibition. Slominski is particularly interested in the function of the windmill as a means of communication: for centuries, messages were relayed over long distances by positioning the blades of the mill in various ways. Today, windmills tend to have romantically nostalgic connotations and are often found in miniature form as decorative garden ornaments.
The Goetz Collection also presents a series of recent large-format pictures in which Slominski combines painting and sculpture: spray-painted works incorporating diverse hand-crafted objects of various manmade materials.
One example of this new body of work is Africa (2009) – a garage door. Slominski hangs doors on the wall as though they were panel paintings; the metal surface becomes a picture plane featuring multicoloured plaques.
Andreas Slominski was born in Meppen, Lower Saxony, in 1959 and now lives and works near Berlin. He studied art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1983 to 1986. Since the early 1990s, he has had a number of major solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums, including Hamburger Kunsthalle (1995 and 1997), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1999), and Fondazione Prada in Milan (2003). In 2006/07 Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt held a major retrospective exhibition in his honour.
A catalogue will be published with essays by Ingvild Goetz, Karsten Löckemann, Birgit Sonna, Stephan Urbaschek and Katharina Vossenkuhl (German/English).
25 May until 18 September 2010
In this major solo exhibition, the Goetz Collection presents about 30 works by Andreas Slominski from the past 15 years. His oeuvre is characterised by a conceptual approach and includes pictures, sculptures and performantive works, many of which reference everyday objects and place them in new contexts.
Slominski came to international attention with the Traps that have been a mainstay of his work since the mid-1980s. The exhibition begins with his Rattenfalle (1998), Trap for Birds of Prey (1999) and Vogelfalle (2000). Both as a mechanical object and as a metaphor, the trap functions through enticement: the bait prompts a temporary abandonment of caution. Then, the trap snaps shut, causing a sudden physical, emotional or intellectual encounter. Contact with the trap generates a highly charged moment of human emotions. It embodies power, deception and violence as well as slyness and deceit.
Slominski‘s art is beguiling. It lures the viewer with the bait of habitual perception. It dazzles us and forces us to look at things more closely. The artist plays with insinuations, meanings and preconceived connotations, often leaving the viewer with a sense of having been „caught out“ and sometimes even feeling like a „victim“.
Another important aspect of Slominski’s work involves windmills of various kinds. Four of these can be seen in the exhibition. Slominski is particularly interested in the function of the windmill as a means of communication: for centuries, messages were relayed over long distances by positioning the blades of the mill in various ways. Today, windmills tend to have romantically nostalgic connotations and are often found in miniature form as decorative garden ornaments.
The Goetz Collection also presents a series of recent large-format pictures in which Slominski combines painting and sculpture: spray-painted works incorporating diverse hand-crafted objects of various manmade materials.
One example of this new body of work is Africa (2009) – a garage door. Slominski hangs doors on the wall as though they were panel paintings; the metal surface becomes a picture plane featuring multicoloured plaques.
Andreas Slominski was born in Meppen, Lower Saxony, in 1959 and now lives and works near Berlin. He studied art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1983 to 1986. Since the early 1990s, he has had a number of major solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums, including Hamburger Kunsthalle (1995 and 1997), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1999), and Fondazione Prada in Milan (2003). In 2006/07 Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt held a major retrospective exhibition in his honour.
A catalogue will be published with essays by Ingvild Goetz, Karsten Löckemann, Birgit Sonna, Stephan Urbaschek and Katharina Vossenkuhl (German/English).