Wilma Tolksdorf

Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf presents recent works by Sebastian Gerstengarbe - a selection of drawings was prominently shown at the exhibition of the Lyonel-Feininger-Galerie, Museum für grafische Künste, Quedlinburg.

While former works have been pure pencil drawings, Sebastian Gerstengarbe expands the color and technique spectrum of the current works using oil paint, pastel, ink and crayons. In many cases the drawings of Gerstengarbe are not depicting the reality, but are images of its representations: crumpled pages of newspapers and magazines, backs of books and particular details from art catalogues – images surrounding us in everyday life and at the same time disappearing in the rapidity of the digital picture flood.

Images taken from the mass media are only references or initial points for works by Sebastian Gerstengarbe and for a distinct reality constructed by the artist. Only at a second glance the shadows of the “Tree Masterminds” are merging into something like a figurative representation. While within the recognizing viewing one still perceives the image behind the bends, Gerstengarbe shifts the selective preferences of our perception – the surface, the crinkle, the bend are getting the full attention and become main actors of the drawn reality.

This inversion of the perception process and the shift of interest can also be found in the choice of the motifs. Sebastian Gerstengarbe developed a new series of motel parking lots during his study trip through North California. Places of the periphery, stations of transit, which will never become a travel destination but always stay sites of temporary usage are now placed in the center of attention. The common, the easily overlooked gets a significance which it hasn’t had before. Through an “unintentional observation” and sketching of the seen Gerstengarbe “offers a legibility that appears easily accessible but which is full of chasms, full of intellectual and formal fractures“, like Michael Freitag puts it aptly.


Sebastian Gerstengarbe (*1973) studied Painting and Graphic Art at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden and Graphic Art at Hochschule für Kunst und Design, Halle. Among others, he has received the "Art Price Energy" by Vattenfall Europe and a travel grant for New York awarded by the Art Foundation Saxony-Anhalt.

For further information and images please contact Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf
via 0049 69 - 430 594 27 or office@wilmatolksdorf.de