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 “Auf dem Holzweg”, we are showcasing three artists who could not be more different in their working methods, their ways of thinking and feeling, and their approach to wood – a material which, as the raw material of their art, is the lowest common denominator, at least at first glance.

Let’s take a look around together:

Maike Gräf presents a selection of brand-new works. Anyone who still has the works from her last solo exhibition two years ago fresh in their mind – or who is admiring the ‘verwooded’ pieces in the room next door – can appreciate the difference: The colour palette has become softer, the contours are less sharply defined, and the wood is allowed to reveal its soft hue more fully. The sculptures appear more poetic, more delicate. Fewer contrasts give the colours more space, emphasising the materiality and the upward-growing form of the figures.

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

With confidence and almost as an afterthought, she engages with the legacy of modernism – the prismatically cut, perspectively interlocking volumes allude to the Cubism of the 1910s and 1920s, whilst the exaggerated expression of the figures points to Expressionism, and the combination of ruggedness and delicacy that her works exude is inconceivable without the tradition of art brut from the 1950s and 1960s.

And isn’t it exciting to see how Maike Gräf brings this tradition – or, one might say, this baggage – into the here and now?

The bold colour palette, the emphasis on contours, the reduction and alienation of colours, and the exaggerated body language come straight from the street. And from the newsagent’s. For digital natives: from the internet. Maike Gräf blends graffiti and comics, street art and manga, epic drama and trashy punchlines with all the classics to invent something new.

And she tells stories to go with it too: who are those two embracing in that passionate kiss? Who is the little sun-worshipper, turning so hopefully towards the Alster, finding nothing today and so having to shine all by themselves? And the Tree of Knowledge, from which eyes grow as fruit, peering out in different directions, falling to the ground and hopefully allowing new trees to grow? And who is the little golem, playfully building his world, so full of optimism and innocence, yet so chaotic and destructive?

Just like Maike Gräf, Thomas Putze is also an uninhibited multiplier. He combines found, discarded, culled or otherwise disposed-of wood and metal. He combines found forms with his own; he cuts, carves, bends, paints, wraps, screws, glues and dowels.

Thomas Putze tells stories through his choice of materials alone. The story, for instance, of the dismantled wooden window frames – which were solid and durable, which were repainted time and again over the years, which could be repaired, and which were nevertheless dismantled and thrown away. Thomas Putze’s approach of using objects far removed from their original function sharpens our perspective. Our perception of the material world with which we surround ourselves. When do we ever give any thought to the cycle of things, of goods, to their nature, to the intrinsic value of a piece of wood, or to the amount of labour required to build a window frame?

All the artist’s narratives deal with us humans as social beings. In the series of works on display today, it is above all our nature as herd animals that he analyses in greater detail. Is it easier, under the protection of the group, to have fun and let go of our inhibitions? The almost naked women in *girls, girls, girls*, at any rate, feel extremely at ease; they present themselves with confidence, they entice yet do not offer themselves up. Or the demonstrators – what are they demonstrating, what are they all showing? Their masculinity, perhaps? They stand there so close together, so completely at ease and at one with themselves whilst engaged in an intimate act. They seem to trust one another, feeling secure in the company of the person next to them. A woman in their midst? Unthinkable!

The theme of sequence is always present in the group. One, and one, and another, and so on. So there is also a rhythm, a beat, within the group. In his works, Thomas Putze explores which ‘song’ is being played within the group. The small white work *Die meisten irren* (*Most Are Mistaken*) shows, in the most extreme reduction—almost abstractly—how, with just a few cuts, a phantom-like group emerges from the mist out of the rhythm of the lines. In *The Great Roll Call No. 2*, the individuality of the people lined up forms a wave, and when outnumbered, the individual dissolves into the sound of the crowd. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you, ladies and gentlemen, when I tell you that, alongside the visual arts, Thomas Putze is also involved in music and performance art?! You’ve no doubt noticed that his performance today, ‘Auf dem Holzweg’, is already underway. Look forward to the final chord after the speech has ended.

And which path does the third artist in our exhibition, Yves Rasch, take? He always carves his complex organic forms from a single block; their openings, intersections and perfection initially leave us, the viewers, in awe.

For a moment, our rationality is suspended; at first, we simply want to know what the form looks like, to walk around it and, at a suitable moment, to feel with our hands what it is. As if in an experiment, Yves Rasch seems to demonstrate to us just how powerful our senses are and how indispensable they are to our very experience of the world. Standing before Yves Rasch’s sculptures, we are in close contact with our sensations, with things we did not even know existed and yet recognise immediately.

Yves Rasch’s sculptures are condensed movements, movement made manifest. They do not depict objects, but rather visualise fundamental principles of life such as movement, growth, stillness and balance.

In this exhibition, we are presenting a series of works on the theme of breathing. Breathing – this uninterrupted movement, usually perceived unconsciously, sometimes steady, sometimes not, sometimes fast, sometimes slow – is a fundamental function of living beings. The sound sculpture *rot* from 2012 forms the starting point for this theme. The circular form – the starting point in many of Yves Rasch’s works – stretches apart and seemingly contracts again; flexible strands of fibre hold the whole together, providing both stability and flexibility. In the current works, which form a group under the title ‘Breathing’, this principle is taken a step further. The forms seem to break free from the circular template; they become amorphous and irregular, yet continually harbour the circle within them as a basic form and as a metaphor for the everlasting cycle of becoming and passing away.

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

With this approach, Yves Rasch consciously and self-assuredly occupies a very distinctive position within contemporary art. He relies entirely on the power of form and the possibilities of wood as a material, urging us to focus on our innate sensuality. As a third way of exploring the path of wood, Yves Rasch directs our attention to the basis of all experience, laying, as it were, the foundation for our engagement with the world – and with art, of course.

I warmly invite you to visit us from time to time. We regularly replace sold exhibits, so there are always new insights to be gained.

With this in mind, I wish you a stimulating tour!