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11/8/2009

Two exhibitions

Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover

This autumn the kestnergesellschaft is showing space-related works by the American artist Phoebe Washburn as well as by Gert and Uwe Tobias, two brothers living in Cologne. Both presentations are characterized in different ways by a dissolving of the border between viewers and work. Phoebe Washburn will fill two halls of the kestnergesellschaft with a proliferating wooden sculpture which is intended to present an interconnected project to the viewers. The visitors participate in a changing situation as it were, an occurrence which resembles what happens in a laboratory. Whereas Washburn works in a processual manner, the installations of Gert and Uwe Tobias have a more pictorial character. Their typewriter-drawings, artist books, watercolors and ceramics are—as basically traditional media—embedded in a strictly composed, spatial staging which is entered by the viewers.

Gert and Uwe Tobias

Gert and Uwe Tobias became known for woodcuts, a medium which is rich in tradition but has become quite rare today. The artists reflect upon the history of the medium and at the same time always make reference to their own background through their pictorial worlds. At least that is the assertion of a prevalent reading of their oeuvre. This perspective is also supported by the artists themselves with the title of a series of large-format woodcuts, Come and see before the tourists will do - The mystery of Transylvania (2004). With this title, they focus on Romania’s tourist trade in a more or less amusing manner. The relationship to their native country comes to the fore in a majority of their works, however, through a visual language which conveys a popular and folkloristic impression. Their painterly and graphic works, just like the sculptural ones, alternate constantly between the figurative and the abstract. Numerous visual references to art history and to popular culture may be discovered. This sort of mixture emerges into view above all in the artist books.

In the kestnergesellschaft, the focus will be on a composite installation of new watercolors and ceramics which are situated within a spatial, site-specific framework. The creation of a woodcut as a poster for the respective exhibition is already an established practice of the artists. They are creating an individual piece for the show in the kestnergesellschaft as well. In addition, the exhibition presents numerous typewriter-drawings and a selection of artist books.

Phoebe Washburn
COMPESHITSTEM - the new deal

With her exhibition »COMPESHITSTEM – the new deal«, Phoebe Washburn is presenting the largest and most complex installation which she has ever been able to realize during her career. The installation was conceived specifically for the kestnergesellschaft and its spaces. It confirms the site-specific, process- and system-oriented approach of the artist. Washburn generally transfers into her work strategies of sustainability and autarchy in artistic processes. Already in the title, her orientation reveals itself to be playful and associative. COMPESHITSTEM sounds like a mixture of »competition« and »system«.

On two stories of the kestnergesellschaft, she occupies Halls II and III, which she has ostensibly transformed into a production workshop and a laboratory. Among the dominant components are a »laboratory« in Hall II, where the production processes are carried out in separate sections, and the so-called »arena« in Hall III, with a length of 21 meters, a width of 9.7 meters, and an impressive height of 5.4 meters. Both spaces are to be linked with electrical cables and water pipes at the front and back stairways. Water and electricity are more than the energetic raw materials with which the artist maintains in motion the production process. They represent the secret and invisible energies which normally flow through a work of art and which connect one part of the exhibition with the other. Associations with Joseph Beuys’ honey pump do not arise simply by chance. Ultimately Washburn is concerned, just as was Beuys, with the power of art to reinterpret objects of everyday life and to bring into view energies and processes.

Image: Phoebe Washburn, Tickle the Shitstem (Detail) 2008
Mixed media, Overall dimensions variable, 141 x 274 x 187 inches, Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Press preview on 12th August 2009, at 11 am
The artists will be present. It would be a pleasure to welcome you on this occasion.

Kestnergesellschaft
Goseriede 11, 30159 Hannover

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