Uwe Poth and Albrecht Wild: Souvenirs
29. September - 21. December 2024
On Sunday, September 29th, from 3 to 6 pm, the opening reception for the exhibition "Souvenirs" by Uwe Poth and Albrecht Wild takes place. Both artists are present. Dr. Martin Henatsch, art historian and rector of the Kunsthochschule Mainz gives an introduction to the exhibition. Albrecht Wild and Uwe Poth present artistically related positions: One works with beer mats, i.e. coasters, the other with postcards; one uses three duplicates, the other 16; one cuts them up, the other does not. Both are united by the fact that the respective original motif is repeated several times. The juxtaposition invites the viewer to discover new perspectives.
The two painters Wild and Poth have stepped out of their original subject matter for these bodies of work for which they both use paper products. For Albrecht Wild, beer mats are the starting point. He cuts them up and puts them back together again to create kaleidoscope-like works. The result is an aesthetic object somewhere between enigma and ornament. Inspired by his travels in Asia, many Asian motifs have found their way into his work.
Traveling was also the starting point for Uwe Poth. Between 1974 and 2010, he created 144 works using postcards of places he had actually been to. A selection of these works will be on display in the exhibition. Rotated and placed next to each other, the postcards create a rhythmic structure in which the views on the cards recede into the background.
Both works share an eye for the aestheticization of the everyday. They show an ornamentation that is not a two-dimensional repetition, but allows the eye to continue searching. As with an optical illusion, the effect is retained even after the principle has been seen through. At the same time, the works become a mirror of cultural history through the use of everyday objects. Each of the works opens up on different levels and plays with the viewer and their perspective.
Albrecht Wild (*1959 Weinheim / Bergstraße) has been on DavisKlemmGallery's artist roster for many years. He was a master student of Thomas Bayrle at the Städelschule and studied for a year at the Slade School with Bruce McLean. In addition to various other prizes and scholarships, this year he received the Ilse-Hannes-Gesellschaft Prize together with Suzanne Wild. He lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
Uwe Poth (*1946 Kiel) lives and works in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He studied from 1965 to 1968 at the Drawing Academy in Hanau and at the Werkkunstschule in Offenbach. From 1968 to 1975, he studied art at the Hochschule für Gestaltung and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, where he studied under Franz Erhard Walther, among others. He then went on to study sociology, art and education at Hamburg University. From 1985 to 2006, he held a professorship at the Academy of Visual Art in Enschede/Netherlands.
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