JANUS HOCHGESAND

"eidos"

January 21 - March 10, 2012

Opening times: Tue - Sat 11 am - 6 pm

The origin of Janus Hochgesand´s complex sculptural works is always a highly personal one. Nevertheless the artists gives the viewer the great chance of universality in terms of interpretation and to invent her or his own story to it all. His sculptures and installations are always monumental and they demonstrate the magic of reality via the most diverse usage of material like fur, neon pigment, peacock´s feathers, gauze bandage, steel, sweets, glass, suitcases, flowers, Caprisonne, precious wood or books. You are often confronted with things from everyday life which syntax and semantics also characterise our relationships to other people – and gives us cause for serious concern. This body of work wants to tell stories as the purest creative form and visionary power. Because it is not only about illustrating stories, but layers of form and content are interacting and transmit the freedom to let them reach the marrow. Functions of things play a minor role. Rather the knowledge about them is even undercut - as it should be in visual arts. Also a spirit of the inarticulable alters these works. Their compositions recrute themselves from worlds of Design, Fashion or Architecture – contexts that also affect our daily routine. On the level of art history Janus Hochgesand sometimes surprises with sentences like: „I think that Michel Majerus is one of the best painters of our time and will be!“

Previous works carry titles like „Survival cave for Kurt Cobain“, „Perfect. In the middle of somewhere else“, „If Sex is everywhere, it doesn´t exist anymore“, „There will never grow flowers in the place where we are right“, „Au revoir, Snow White“ or „Train yourself to let go of everything you fear lose“.

Janus Hochgesand was born near Koblenz, Germany in 1981, lives in Hamburg and studied at Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in the class of Andreas Slominski, at La Esmeralda Art School, Mexico City as well as in the master class of Tobias Rehberger at Frankfurt Städelschule. In 2009 he received the Städelschule Award, in 2010 the Stipendium Stiftung Kunstfonds and in 2011 the Rheinland-Pfalz-Stipendium for the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris. He is one of the founders of Kunstverein Mauritius and had exhibitions at Kunstverein Frankfurt, PTH St. Georgen, Galerie Fiebach-Minninger, Cologne, at Kunstverein Ettlingen and at Limoncello Gallery, London.

For his first solo exhibition Janus Hochgesand develops a monumental installation piece with the approximate measures of 4 x 6 x 2 m that adds up to a huge and complex formation made of chock blocks, colours, a light box, blackberry branches, a pushcart and the most intangible material.