calendario eventi  :: 

X

5/2/2009

pro forma

Kunstlerhaus Dortmund, Dortmund

Participating artists:
Kassandra Becker, Camilla Dahl, Ron van der Ende, Lorenz Estermann, Marie Gerlach, Gerhard Hahn, Christoph Platz, Ariel Schlesinger, Dorlis Tellmann, Frederik Tolmatcheff, Freek Wambacq

Concept and Organization: Ulrike Stockhaus

Everything that surrounds us has long been shaped by us, is designed. From everyday tools to seemingly natural landscapes; clothes, machinery, necessaries, buildings, cities – the whole environment has been modelled; food, even animals and plants are reproduced in a well defined manner. The guidelines for the creation of shapes are changing with time due to styles and fashions.

In visual art on the contrary it is the shape itself that matters or rather the expression of the subjective relation of the artist with respect to the shaped reality. The artistic work is quasi free of the need for a definite functionality.

However, the act of drawing a sharp line between designed tools and art objects lacking a well-defined function is a delicate one: the formal languages of art and design are influencing each other thereby blurring this line more and more for different reasons.

Goods of consumption are not only designed to optimize their functionality but their shape is meant to distinguish them from comparable competing products. Since long fine art doesn’t provide designers with any general guidelines for aesthetical quality anymore. It is even that art is borrowing forms and patterns from design thereby rendering the separation line permeable from both sides.

The exhibition pro forma presents art works using everyday forms or decorative patterns as given designed material to be elaborated in an playful manner or to be set into dislocated contexts. In spite of their simple and familiar formation they evoke a surprisingly strange reaction in the observer’s eye thereby disturbing our efforts of classifying them with respect to categories as function or taste.
pro forma poses the question of artistic possibilities of individual aesthetical experiences in a completely designed and thus unchangeable, given exterior world. Besides their artistic quality, the invited positions display a provoking relation to everyday life and the designed environment.

Kassandra Becker [Germany]
Duplication, refelxion and doubling are recurrent motifs in the work of Kassandra Becker. The artist duplicates figures and arranges them in groups or pairs. For her wallpaper she creates ornamental patterns by symmetric arrangement of her photographs.

Camilla Dahl [Norway]
A hostess is lying on top of a champagne bar while serving champagne from a lower part of the object. The champagne is dripping into a bowl. The visitor is invited to kneel down and drink the liquid directly from one of the mouthpieces. (C.D.)

Ron van der Ende [The Netherlands]
Ron van der Ende works as a sculptor in Rotterdam. He creates perspective bas-reliefs of automobiles and images of the Industrial Age from used wood. Materialistic recycling is thus going along with the optical recycling of icons.

Lorenz Estermann [Austria]
Esterman's models are architectural objects intervevning in real, i.e. everyday's space as well as functioning as projection motifs for virtual spacial situations. (F. Steininger)

Marie Gerlach [Germany]
Marie Gerlach presents photographs of objects that appear to be parts of some kind of apparatus. The technical design has however been created by the artist exclusively for the images.

Gerhard Hahn [Germany]
Gerhard Hahn is confronting methods, materials and defects of mass production with his personal artistic visions. In this field of tension he is creating hybrid objects between technics and organics thereby assigning an authentic, human dimension to the work and its production process.
The presented works are results of the project THE LANGUAGE OF IRON at Kohler Co. iron foundry, Wisconsin and the project REPRODUKTUS with the Saint Gobain Group in Bexbach/Saar with the synthetic high-temperature ceramic Silicium Carbide (see image).

Christoph Platz [Germany]
Christoph Platz creates wooden hollow moulds of the shape of human body parts that seem to be lacking their inner content. They are dressed with coloured clothes that are getting a new designation that is defined by sculpture.

Ariel Schlesinger [Israel]
Schlesinger is either modifying industrially produced shapes to create new objects or having individual shapes crafted by machines: He is measuring function and art.

Dorlis Tellmann [Germany]
Dorlis Tellmann is combining everyday's objects like radiators, that are usually designed to be unobtrusive as parts of a playful installation created by light and movement.

Frederik Tolmatcheff [Belgium]
Tolmatcheff creates interventions on the border line between furnishing of urban space and art in public space by thematically adjusting them to the respective users.

Freek Wambacq [Belgium]
Wambacq is combining designed objects to create new ensembles, by sculptural arrangements of copies, modification by engravings or simply placement into new contexts. The created images are liberating the objects not only from their function.


In the context of the project transversale - kunst und design in dortmund
http://www.transversale-dortmund.net

Image: Ariel Schlesinger

Opening: Friday, February 6 at 8 pm

Kuenstlerhaus Dortmund
Sunderweg 1, D-44147 Dortmund

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