Da in die Front

Tim Löhde, Aufteilung der Zielgerade In his exhibition Aufteilung der Zielgerade (Breaking down the home stretch), Tim Löhde questions the compulsory horizontality of any given narrative. Using chance encounters as the impetus for his work, the artist creates new realities, interweaving his photographs with sounds and sculptural elements to produce a large-scale installation that opens up further facticities. On a journey through Jiufen in Taiwan, Tim Löhde’s attention is drawn to the movement of a single leaf alongside a mountain trail. The artist decides to capture with his camera what is to him an important sculptural moment. The resulting nine-part panel is displayed on a metal structure designed specifically for this presentation. During a visit to Villa Hügel in Essen with his family, Tim Löhde photographs his father standing in front of a window in a stately room. In the background, a park landscape is visible in the distance. Two diverging images of this single moment are hung in the exhibition space, under glass and positioned one above the other. A second two-part work is based on a photograph of the artist’s mother as a baby. By means of image editing programs, the artist has made this picture his own, using photos he has taken of different types of vegetation to render the figure almost unidentifiable. Set between two metal brackets and without protective glass, these works are positioned diagonally across from each other within the space. Glued to a mirror is a photograph of a radiator abstracted by the impact of very bright sunlight. Similarly, a photograph of an arrow, taken by the artist himself inside a tram car, is also affixed to a mirror. This reflective surface demands an extraordinary ability of the respective motif to hold its own, as the photograph’s immediate surroundings change depending on the viewer’s position and the entire room installation interlocks extensively with the selected image. This description of his photographic work reveals how Tim Löhde explores different ways to present photography without falling back on traditional framing. It is moreover noteworthy how the artist develops his work from everyday life and appears to base his individual pieces on linear narratives, yet within his installation Tim Löhde understands the separate works as horizontally connected, as if these events had occurred at the same time. For him, they form a metaphor for the countless moments that take place simultaneously in everyday life. In his installation Aufteilung der Zielgerade (Breaking down the home stretch), Tim Löhde has positioned two yellow oil tanks vertically within the space. His exhibition for Da in die Front is built around these objects, which interest him for their ability to resonate sound. Made of fiberglass, their illuminated, industrial forms are connected by linear cables to table-like modules developed by the artist. Placed upon these four displays are four speakers that to him represent the sculptural norm of an archetypal loudspeaker. Just like the amplifiers or the oil tanks he uses, these objects too point to something bygone; they seem to be from a different time. The sound that can be heard in the room, some of which is recorded directly from the artist’s everyday life, is similar: like his photographs, it captures a past situation and processes it artistically. But the audio is more than just a side show for Tim Löhde. Additional sounds were generated by the artist himself and underline his intensive exploration of music, and specifically the shō, a Japanese mouth organ. This instrument inspired him to create his own preset, which he developed on a synthesizer in order to record its eleven standard chords. Because the sounds are spaced out over time, the visitor is however no longer able to distinguish the specifics of the respective chords. A figure on all fours, crawling, propping itself up? Half stumbled, half sexy. At first glance we are met with a shape that roughly resembles a human figure, shot through with quivering, fluctuating pink lines and pulsating dark pockets that together form an amorphous body, like a fleeting moment, that seems to be taking shape in this very instant only to dissolve again in the next – as if this configuration had arisen purely by fortuity. With its enticing shades of pink and a pose that evokes erotic, submissive motives, the form sparks associations. The sculpture's mass and visual agitation are in stark contrast to the vulnerability of the pose. At its "head end", the form, which consists largely of concentric shapes, breaks open, reaches out into the space. A "foot", caught in a twisted motion, also stands out from the overall silhouette, making the destabilising nature of the monumental presence apparent. This is not a coincidence, as it is the ambivalent moment of falling/getting up that reveals the artist's fascination. Perhaps the figure is about to hit the ground. A falling that shines. But Carolin Eidner's statue is also reminiscent of the lascivious movements of a stripper, the luminosity of its colors celebrating both the pulsing of life and its vulnerability. Carolin Eidner's plaster works begin with a sketch. This initial, swift finding of form is followed by a highly structured sculptural process in which the artist translates the rapidity of the drawing into a statue. Her chosen material of pigmented plaster is applied to a base of polystyrene and wood, the technical properties of which form a contrast to the fleeting gesture of sketching. The individual shapes within the colored plaster sit next to each other like pixels: the exterior of the piece is sanded down to a plane and therefore creates no relief. Rather, the smooth surface recalls the work's two-dimensional origins and is transposed into three-dimensionality through the stud frame developed specifically to hold it. In 2017, I organized an exhibition titled “Da instinktiv die Frontalansicht dominiert...” at Werft77 in Düsseldorf that led me in a new direction. In this exhibition I presented work by Nina Nowak, Philipp Röcker, and Thomas Schütte, as well as my own sculptures. The common theme of the exhibited work was the bust. As a fragment of a statue, this collaboration became the initial spark for Da in die Front. Within this concept, I went on to work with Peter Ewig, Camillo Grewe, Christine Moldrickx, Angela Fette, Christoph Westermeier & Jurgen Ots, and Rene Spitzer. The series of exhibitions I developed formulates a new kind of interaction and is my very personal and individual approach to entering into a cooperative dialog. A specific reference to the classic statue provides the intersection point between the involved artists and is highlighted in individual presentations by each participant. The aspects of contemporary sculpture collected in this way will ultimately be compiled into a publication designed to initiate further exploration and discussion. Through this dissection Da in die Front creates an artistic battery charged by diversity and at the same time serves as a sensorium for the statue’s place in the here and now. supported by: DC Open, Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf, Kunst und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Neustart Kultur, Gieselmann