calendario eventi  :: 

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20/8/2004

Stefan Saffer

mullerdechiara, Berlin

CAMPING BERLIN

Finissage on September 18th, 6:00 - 10:00 pm

müllerdechiara is pleased to present 'Camping Berlin', the artist's project with Stefan Saffer. In August, the gallery space will be transformed into an atelier for the recently relocated artist who just returned to Berlin after one year at the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program in New York City. The project, 'Camping Berlin' was conceived as a work in progress. The exhibition will change and develop over time. Like camping, the exhibition will be a process of on-going adaptation and improvisation where the works presented will be continually exchanged and moved, culminating in a final installation during the week of the 18th of September, 2004.

Often starting with a blank sheet of paper which he then draws on and cuts out, Saffer's work is a process of reduction which he refers to as 'mental editing' ­­ of cutting away the surface to reveal a network of diverse ideas and thoughts. The dialogue between creating and cutting away is sometimes also inspired by found imagery ­ other drawings, posters or a wide array of other source material, becoming the starting point for Saffers rigorous artistic distillation. This technique, which the artist refers to as his personal practice, is a reflection of the growing complexity of the world around him. A process of seemingly formal abstraction appears more as a reflective quotation and developed thought regarding known and existing structures. Saffer's work plays with narratives found in literature, architecture and pop-culture. In his work, 'Rainer Maria' for example, he translates the poem “The Panther' from Rainer Maria Rilke into a three-dimensional cage of words.
The technique of Saffer's fragile paper cut-outs finds it's art historical references within folk art traditions while the content of his delicate works, uses sources rooted in contemporary art. Hovering between sculpture, painting and drawing, Saffer's works try to define an “in between': light and shadow, negative and positive. The paper or cardboard hangs by just two pins, poised inches from the wall, casting hard-edged shadows onto the wall. Functioning as a stage, the wall and the space between are intrinsic to the work itself. A hierarchy is revealed in which simple lines take on an air of authority, and a casual doodle is transformed into a formal abstraction. This type of impromptu and emphasis of the organic combined with the evidence of Saffer's keen decision-making and aesthetic delicacy is an inticing contradiction. Saffer is staging the world as a fragile net of history and stories, thoughts and feelings, ideas and their shadows they cast.

Stefan Saffer, born 1969 in Eggolsheim, lives and works in Berlin. He studied Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste at Nurmberg and received an MA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College in London. Saffer also works with art & architecture with the London based company public works.

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mullerdechiara
Weydinger Strasse 10
D-10178 Berlin

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