Klaus Winichner
11 Mar - 10 May 2014
© Klaus Winichner
untitled, 2014
oil, spray paint on pressboard
74 x 85 cm
(Hung in private space of Galerie Sandra Bürgel, Berlin 2014)
untitled, 2014
oil, spray paint on pressboard
74 x 85 cm
(Hung in private space of Galerie Sandra Bürgel, Berlin 2014)
KLAUS WINICHNER
Papa tot
11 March - 10 May 2014
The exhibition entitled „Papa tot“ - „Daddy Dead” - not only hints to a singular situation, it emphasizes, or rather reclaims a private concern of the artist and the art works presented. This doesn’t mean at all that they’d remain unaffected by other symbolic, imaginary or real orders, and the questioning of their consistencies. Effectively, a conceivable scepticism about the intimacy of a daddy (dead) descends from these fields, and in a way the scarce title insists upon its commonality. Behind the decision not to use the words of ‘Father’ or ‘Herr’ (‘Lord’), deeply rooted in symbolism, religion or political economy, stands a serious attempt to describe an absence, maybe grief that finds its way tocheerfulness.
In his art and in talks Klaus Winichner has accentuated the importance of an unobstructed view on art. The ideal of an eventually indissoluble disposition of art is as alive as ever - and maybe a more delicate job than ever before, circumscribed by the artist as follows: „Ich räume meine Phantastik frei.“ (Engl. approx. “I have to clear out my fantasies”, the German word ‘freiräumen’ holds the syllable ‘free’). - Of course, today, the artist can’t remember having said this sentence. However, Klaus Winichner starts from the premise that a situation must be created, not represented, and that specific rules, autonomies, and disruptions within the comprehension of the world should rather be embraced than eliminated.
„Papa tot“ motivically is indebted to flowers and portraits. These are complemented with three used chairs. The offered flowers combine with the portraits to an Arcadian scenery in poured colour and sensually applied oil. An unexpected thrust into Rococo strengthens the thought, also the thought of green meadows. A part of this impression is due to the evocation of light and shadow in the use of colour. Last year Klaus Winichner developed a synthesis of the two genres painting and sculpture in his painted works. The study of the body and its twisting influences the modelling of the colour coats as a matter of fact. The nature of the paintings thereby constantly shifts between tangible, almost literal descriptiveness and a state of rapture. The palette of the paintings and the composition of their pictorial elements have the kind of balance and emotion that can come out only by observation and introspection (as it can be sensed best in church pictures). The artist himself appreciates baroque ecclesial stucco works of his Bavarian native country, which, he says, never overload and testify a refreshing porosity for their environment.
Every contemporary imprint has its own semiotics from the rank of distinct symptoms. „Ich bin mir selbst verloren“ - “I to myself am lost“ - writes Goethe in his Marienbad Elegy. Is this loss still a remaining symptom? Or does the diagnosis of it drop away within our postmodern relativism, one that was born out of post-war contingency and assumes that historicity and moral action can’t be aligned?
How do I then create possibilities to speak about myself?
Klaus Winichner lives and works in Berlin since 1999. 2000 - 2002 he exhibited at the maschenmode run by Guido W. Baudach, 2004 at Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch. In the early 2000s he shaped to a remarkable degree the Berlin genre of group exhibitions organised by artists, unfortunately followed only by a few in consequence. This is his fifth solo exhibition at Galerie Sandra Bürgel. During the last years Klaus Winichner - although artist - has been straying in the neoliberal Liegenschaftspolitik, the property policy of the Berlin Senate. Since 2011 he invites to public lectures with the surtitle “On Communism”. Although the talks of guest speakers take place in the artist’s studio, in front of art that can be looked at thoroughly, they don’t apply themselves to art theory, but explain in substance Marxist Dialectic and Historical Materialism. In May the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation will lend busts of the German post-war sculptor Bernhard Heiliger for a joint exhibition in the Prenzlauer Promenade 152; the exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue
Papa tot
11 March - 10 May 2014
The exhibition entitled „Papa tot“ - „Daddy Dead” - not only hints to a singular situation, it emphasizes, or rather reclaims a private concern of the artist and the art works presented. This doesn’t mean at all that they’d remain unaffected by other symbolic, imaginary or real orders, and the questioning of their consistencies. Effectively, a conceivable scepticism about the intimacy of a daddy (dead) descends from these fields, and in a way the scarce title insists upon its commonality. Behind the decision not to use the words of ‘Father’ or ‘Herr’ (‘Lord’), deeply rooted in symbolism, religion or political economy, stands a serious attempt to describe an absence, maybe grief that finds its way tocheerfulness.
In his art and in talks Klaus Winichner has accentuated the importance of an unobstructed view on art. The ideal of an eventually indissoluble disposition of art is as alive as ever - and maybe a more delicate job than ever before, circumscribed by the artist as follows: „Ich räume meine Phantastik frei.“ (Engl. approx. “I have to clear out my fantasies”, the German word ‘freiräumen’ holds the syllable ‘free’). - Of course, today, the artist can’t remember having said this sentence. However, Klaus Winichner starts from the premise that a situation must be created, not represented, and that specific rules, autonomies, and disruptions within the comprehension of the world should rather be embraced than eliminated.
„Papa tot“ motivically is indebted to flowers and portraits. These are complemented with three used chairs. The offered flowers combine with the portraits to an Arcadian scenery in poured colour and sensually applied oil. An unexpected thrust into Rococo strengthens the thought, also the thought of green meadows. A part of this impression is due to the evocation of light and shadow in the use of colour. Last year Klaus Winichner developed a synthesis of the two genres painting and sculpture in his painted works. The study of the body and its twisting influences the modelling of the colour coats as a matter of fact. The nature of the paintings thereby constantly shifts between tangible, almost literal descriptiveness and a state of rapture. The palette of the paintings and the composition of their pictorial elements have the kind of balance and emotion that can come out only by observation and introspection (as it can be sensed best in church pictures). The artist himself appreciates baroque ecclesial stucco works of his Bavarian native country, which, he says, never overload and testify a refreshing porosity for their environment.
Every contemporary imprint has its own semiotics from the rank of distinct symptoms. „Ich bin mir selbst verloren“ - “I to myself am lost“ - writes Goethe in his Marienbad Elegy. Is this loss still a remaining symptom? Or does the diagnosis of it drop away within our postmodern relativism, one that was born out of post-war contingency and assumes that historicity and moral action can’t be aligned?
How do I then create possibilities to speak about myself?
Klaus Winichner lives and works in Berlin since 1999. 2000 - 2002 he exhibited at the maschenmode run by Guido W. Baudach, 2004 at Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch. In the early 2000s he shaped to a remarkable degree the Berlin genre of group exhibitions organised by artists, unfortunately followed only by a few in consequence. This is his fifth solo exhibition at Galerie Sandra Bürgel. During the last years Klaus Winichner - although artist - has been straying in the neoliberal Liegenschaftspolitik, the property policy of the Berlin Senate. Since 2011 he invites to public lectures with the surtitle “On Communism”. Although the talks of guest speakers take place in the artist’s studio, in front of art that can be looked at thoroughly, they don’t apply themselves to art theory, but explain in substance Marxist Dialectic and Historical Materialism. In May the Bernhard Heiliger Foundation will lend busts of the German post-war sculptor Bernhard Heiliger for a joint exhibition in the Prenzlauer Promenade 152; the exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue