TOBIAS HANTMANN. GESCHICHTE

TOBIAS HANTMANN. GESCHICHTE
08.09.2018 –20.10.2018

With the storm

Suddenly, a bell rings

The two titles of the exhibited pictures join together to form a sentence –a short narrative. Understood as a hint of history or as a story, the exhibition’s title refers to the potential of pictures to point beyond themselves. Thus the words add additional layersto the visual impressions to verbally continue the imaginary in the concrete.

Blue-gray light penetrates the tinted windows of the gallery. Where ceiling lamps illuminate a part of the wall in the dim room, two islands of light appear, each with one pictorial object: deep aluminium box frames, acrylic glass on top and velour surfaces on the bottom of theboxes. Complex images full of spatial and material impressions have been inscribed in the soft surface by raising and flattening the velour pile: planks, superstructures, model ships, weapons, rigs. The showcase-like pictures show dioramas and act as such.
In their execution they are exuberant and frail, seducing and confusing, mighty and fragil. They tellof another era; of violence, conquest and calamity; of visual representationas objects of remembranceand education; of streamsand storms and ships.
Geschichteshows pictures that challenge their nature and meaning. Pictures that call for an intense examination.

Geschichte is Tobias Hantmann’s sixth solo exhibition at Galerie Bernd Kugler.