Maike Gräf, Thomas Putze, Yves Rasch – Auf dem Holzweg

Anlässlich ihres 3. Geburtstages zeigt die Stern-Wywiol Galerie neue Arbeiten von drei Galeriekünstlern. Die Gegenüberstellung der drei Holzbildhauer macht ihren jeweils ganz eigenen künstlerischen Ansatz deutlich und lässt die Vielfalt möglicher Holz-Wege erahnen.

MAIKE GRÄF
Die Holzskulpturen von Maike Gräf verbinden ein gegenwärtiges
Menschenbild mit einem traditionellen künstlerischen Handwerk. Ihre figurativen Skulpturen greifen durch ihre prismatischen Flächen und Kanten und ihre plakative Farbigkeit aktuelle Kulturmuster auf, während sie inhaltlich von den klassischen Themen Liebe, Leben und Tod handeln. Maike Gräf nimmt mit dieser Symbiose eine unverwechselbare Position in der zeitgenössischen Skulptur ein.
In ihrer aktuellen Werkphase zeigt sie die ursprüngliche Materialität
auf, in dem sie Holz in Form, Fläche und Farbe neu verhandelt.

THOMAS PUTZE
Thomas Putze ist ein Junk-Art Künstler. Weggeworfene und gefundene Holzstücke werden in einem bildhauerischen Prozess bearbeitet und die in ihnen verborgenen Figuren befreit. Formal interessiert ihn die Kombination unterschiedlichster Materialien. Inhaltlich beschäftigt er sich mit dem Unperfekten, dem Makel und der Verletzlichkeit der Kreatur, die er aber positiv und handelnd darstellt.
In seiner neuen Werkserie zum Thema Ordnung, Reihung und Gruppe kratzt er an der Grenze zum Abstrakten.

YVES RASCH
Yves Rasch arbeitet wie Maike Gräf stets aus einem Stück Holz, allerdings bindet er die Materialität des Holzes ganz zentral in sein Werk ein. Anders als die beiden anderen Künstler arbeitet er abstrakt. Seine organische Formensprache ist verdichtete Bewegung, sie verbildlicht grundlegende Prinzipien des Lebens wie Wachstum, Ruhe und Gleichgewicht.
Seine Werke üben eine große haptische und sinnliche Anziehungskraft aus. Er stellt eine neue Serie zum Thema Atmung vor. Eine Metapher für das Leben.

Under the title "On the Wooden Path" we are showing three artistic personalities who could not be more different in their working methods, their thinking and feeling, their handling of the material wood, which as the basic material of their art is the lowest common denominator, at least at first glance.

Let's take a look around together:

Maike Gräf presents us with a selection of dewy works. Anyone who still has the works from her last solo exhibition two years ago in mind or who is looking in love at the woody in the room next door can appreciate the difference: The colouring has become softer, the contours are less sharply emphasised, the wood is allowed to show its soft hue more. The sculptures seem more poetic, more delicate. Less contrast leaves more space for the colours, it emphasises the materiality and the rising form of the figures.

As always, Maike Gräf takes a classical sculptural approach and cuts her figures out of the block of wood. The themes of her art are also classical: love, life, death. How the artist deals with all this classicism is striking:

She confidently and almost incidentally deals with the heritage of modernism - the prismatically cut, perspective-interlocked volumes refer to cubism of the 1910s/20s, the exaggerated expression of the figures to expressionism, and the combination of gruffness and delicacy that her works exude is inconceivable without the tradition of art brut of the 1950s/60s.

And isn't it exciting to see how Maike Gräf transfers this tradition, one could also say this ballast, into the here and now?

The clear colouring, the emphasis on contour, the reduction and alienation of colours and the exaggerated body language come directly from the street. And from the newsstand. For digital natives: from the net. Maike Gräf mixes graffiti and comics, street art and manga, epic drama and trashy pointing to the whole classic and invents something new.

And she tells stories to go with it: Who is embracing in a heartfelt kiss? Who is the little sun worshipper who turns to the Alster with such hope, finds nothing today and then has to shine himself? And the tree of knowledge, which grows eyes as fruit, which look out in different directions, which fall to the ground and hopefully let new trees grow? And who is the little golem who playfully builds his world, so full of optimism and innocence, so chaotic and destructive?

Like Maike Gräf, Thomas Putze is also an unrestrained multiplier. He combines found, discarded, sorted out or otherwise disposed of wood and metal with each other. He combines found forms with his own forms, he cuts, scores, bends, paints, wraps, screws and glues and dowels.

Thomas Putze already tells stories with his choice of materials. The story, for example, of the dismantled wooden window frames that were solid and durable, that were repainted again and again over the years, that could be repaired, and that were then nevertheless dismantled and thrown away. Thomas Putz's approach of using the objects far from their original function sharpens our view. Our view of the world of things we surround ourselves with. When do we think about the cycle of things, of goods, about their nature, about the value of a piece of wood, about the amount of work it takes to build a window frame?

All of the artist's narratives are about us humans as social beings. In the series of works exhibited today, it is above all our characteristic as herd animals that he analyses in more detail. Is it easier to have fun, to shed our inhibitions, in the protection of the group? In any case, the almost naked women in girls, girls, girls feel extremely good about themselves, they show themselves confidently, they entice and yet do not offer themselves. Or the demonstrators, what are they all demonstrating, what are they all showing? Are they showing their masculinity? They are standing together so intimately, so relaxed and at ease while performing an intimate task. They seem to trust each other, are at ease in the company of the man next to them. A woman in between? Unthinkable!

In the group, there is always the theme of line-up. One, and one, and another, and so on. So there is also a rhythm, a beat in the group. Thomas Putze explores in his works which song is being played in the group. The small white work die meisten irren shows in extreme reduction, almost abstractly, how with a few cuts from the rhythm of the lines a chimerical group emerges from the fog. In the large appeal No. 2, the individuality of the people lining up forms a wave and, when outnumbered, the individual dissolves in the sound of the mass. I'm sure you won't be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, if I now tell you that Thomas Putze also does music and performance art in addition to visual art?! Surely you have noticed that his performance today, "On the Wooden Path", is already underway. Look forward to the final chord after the end of the speech.

And what path does the third artist in our exhibition, Yves Rasch, take? He always cuts his complex organic forms from a block, whose breakthroughs, overlaps and perfection at first astonish us as viewers.

Our ratiocination is suspended for a moment, we first just want to know what the form looks like, want to walk around it and in a favourable moment also feel with our hands what it is. As in an experiment, Yves Rasch seems to show us how strong our senses are and how absolutely they make our experience of the world possible. In front of Yves Rasch's sculptures, we are close to our sensations, to things we did not even know and yet immediately recognise.

Yves Rasch's sculptures are condensed movements, movement that has become form. They do not depict things, but illustrate fundamental principles of life such as movement, growth, rest, balance.

In the exhibition we show a series of works on the theme of breathing. Breathing, this uninterrupted, usually not consciously perceived movement, sometimes regular, sometimes not, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, which is a basic function of living beings. The sound body red from 2012 is the starting point for this theme. The circular form, the starting point in many of Yves Rasch's works, pulls apart and seemingly also together again, moving strands of fibre hold the whole, giving firmness and flexibility. In the current works, which form a group under the title Breathing, this principle is taken further. The forms seem to free themselves from the circular template, they become amorphous and irregular and yet always contain the circle as a basic form and as a metaphor for the perpetual sequence of becoming and passing away.

Yves Rasch's objects awaken in us a need for closeness, for touch. We are directly addressed on an emotional level.

With this attitude, Yves Rasch consciously and self-confidently takes up a very unique position in contemporary art. He relies entirely on the power of form and the possibilities of wood as a material and urges us to focus on our innate sensuality. As a third way of walking the wooden path, Yves Rasch points us to the basis of all experience and lays the foundation, so to speak, for our approach to the world and to art anyway.

I cordially invite you to visit us from time to time. We regularly exchange sold exhibits and thus always offer new insights.

In this spirit, I wish you a stimulating tour!