Thomas Straub: rigorose Dämmerung

June 6^th - July 4^th, 2009

Opening times: Tue – Fri 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. + Sat 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

The gallery wil be closed on Saturday, June 27th, 2009.

Breaking up and redefining contraries via a conceptional, concrete as well as narrative language together with summarizing the evident and the obscure in one pictorial item belongs to Thomas Straubs main target in his new works. The artist normally begins his work with detecting a defined form whose stature is revised and mooted within a synthetic point of view in his sculptural work.

Under the terms of art-historical as well as socially analytical documents Straub works in a discoursive manner, and his works make a contribution to the substance of the discourse due to their scientific context in the end.

For the exhibition „rigorose Dämmerung“ – his second solo show at tinderbox – Thomas Straub developed a spatial and lighting concept that is supposed to distinguish the scenic character of the gallery space. At the same time this concept shall build up a type of show-jumping course by means of positioning the works and the light within the created room structure. In the first instance there will be a huge rastered wooden structure covered with half-transparent construction foil that works as a membrane and reveals a seperated and self-contained room inside the hole room. So the viewer will be guided through Straub´s intended guidance and control. Space, light as material and shadow melt with the substance of each work of art and the forms of the objects set their marks in the twilight.

The state of dawn can be seen as constitutive element of the exhibition: four maneuverable objects are the only light source. From a metallic stand on rolls grow big wooden branches with a different quantity of neon tubes that create a partial illumination of the limited space. So the interior oscillates between a reconstruction of an organically grown landscape and a staged film-set that again changes between statics and action in its openly built room of maneuver. Thomas Straubs sculptures here take the role of supernumeraries and the function of requisites at once.

The sculptural wall-piece „o. T. (Rorschach-Test)“ is made from a found plus a carved branch that appears completely identical, but mirrored compared to the „original“. Originally Rorschachtest is a psychoanalytic method from 1921 named after Hermann Rorschach, that was invented to decode the subconsciousness via efforts to interpretate given forms. This method provides a formal reference: It is the pattern, stereotype-like done structure of a picture that shall arrange - assemled to an associative form - an inner picture of the ego in the mind of the beholder. Thomas Straub applied this mirroring technique to the branch of a tree. The symmetric fitting of the naturally grown branch and it´s copy outlines the paradoxical relationship between factual form and phantom, and at the same time this works makes the attempt to reconstruct something unreal evident.

Amongst functional product and artistic object the piece „Große Trage“ (engl. big barrow) results in a visualisation concerning the vicinity of Design and conceptual, minimal Art. Drafted with two grip modules this object oscillates between table and stretcher but still refuses a clear attribution, especially within the reference frame of a gallery space. The ground floor sculpture „Große Trage“ seems as a requisite within an exhibitional context that implicates movement but at the same time it stays „just“ an object.

„Polyptychon“ is the examplary, schematical replica of a winged altar. It is also meant as the analysis of combinations of form in space. The free-standing object is placed on two scantlings and its components were built due to well-balanced proportions, e.g. symmetry and golden ratio. This work mirrors a mathematical and architectural exposure to the elements of christian / liturgical chattels. The panels of the wings are replaced with monochrome surfaces: In a closed position they are black and while the altar is open they are white. This reduced vocabulary as well as colouring refer to Minimalism concerning concept and aesthetics but with respect to semantics this piece bears on the religious tradition of rituals. This artificial study seems to be a cultic relict or staffage.

While „Polyptychon“ is a levelling of the iconic, it is the icon itsself that is subject of consideration within the paper work „Skull“: a photocopy of a catalogue page with Andy Warhol´s silkscreen with a skull and it´s shadow from 1976 is partly covered – and ennobled - with beaten gold. In an analytical and documentary manner Thomas Straub picks up the idea of Vanitas, and at the same time he makes the copy to an icon which itsself becomes the suject.

Converting and picking up a concrete materiality becomes even more conceptual in the work „Schwarzes Quadrat“. The carrier of this piece is a sheet of paper from a white sculpture by Felix Gonzales-Torres which was made in the exact dimensions of Malevitch´s „Black square“. Straub divided the surface into seven times seven quadratic units, overlayed them with black reddle and drew a letter on each square with graphite. The occurring writing equals a light piece by Bruce Nauman. The shimmering surface of every letter changes between presence and absence or rather legibility and deconstruction depending on light incidence.

Christina Irrgang