CHRISTOF ZWIENER
12. Sept. - 18. Oct. 2003
Opening: Friday, Sept 12, 7pm

A child’s bedroom is a construction made of wooden slats, a lifesize pre-historic mammoth of string, knotted between trees. Christof Zwiener (born 1972) works with interim spaces, non-areas, the absence of objects and living things.
With simple items – thread, sticky tape and slats – he constructs filigree three-dimensional “imprints” of his memories of places and his perception of objects in space: the gap behind the living-room cupboard, the family home seen from the viewpoint of a plum tree, or a part of a horse, are scanned dot by dot and then interpreted as a thread or wooden construction.


For his first exhibition in our gallery Christof Zwiener has built a 3 x 9 m room-installation of string, which brings everyday places from childhood fantasies back to life: the space under the sofa, the gap beneath the television or the area between the wall and the door-frame. These appear now as diminished, knotted string-sculptures, which seem attached in the gallery room. Partially invisible places are described and appear – in scale and shape more in line with the individual memory than realistically precise – as black and white threads in the room, or as fixing points on the floor and ceiling. Through the transparency of the construction, all sides can be seen simultaneously, therefore on first view an abstract room-image can be seen.

Zwiener reconstructs here – as also in earlier works – places and objects, or their absence, which no longer exist or may be elsewhere, by emphasizing the interim spaces. With this approach and using a very individual technical transformation, he directs our attention not to the permanent sculptural statements, but to fragility, which at the same time is characterized by analysis and melancholy. “Segments of area retain the balance between suggestion and the secret, memory and longing, they play with invisibility and transience, especially where the action of light reveals almost nothing of the ephemeral string construction to the searching gaze.” (Carina Herring).


> from Oct. 29 - Nov 2 we will be presenting Christof Zwiener's work in a statement booth at ART COLOGNE fair


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