Dieter Mammel, Jan Brokof - mauritsvandelaar

Now:

Dieter Mammel – TRANSIT

Jan Brokof – Cannibal Politics

paintings, collage drawings

11 June – 09 July 2023

finissage Sunday 9 July from 13:00 – 17:00 hours

**Dieter Mammel**, *Anbaden (First Swim)*, 2022,ink on canvas, 100 x 75 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *Escape*, 2022, ink on canvas, 100 x 75 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *Zeit (Time)*, 2023, ink on canvas, 145 x 110 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *The Ice Storm*, 2019, ink on canvas, 150 x 200 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *Troubled Times*, 2021, ink on canvas, 70 x 50 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *Time Travel*, 2022,ink on canvas, 100 x 75 cm

**Dieter Mammel**, *Rude Awakening*, 2022, ink on canvas, 100 x 75 cm

Due to climate change, political unrest, war and migration, we are facing profound changes in our time, which we often experience as overwhelming and confusing. In his latest series of paintings TRANSIT, Dieter Mammel (1965) translates these seemingly uncontrollable forces into a human scale. Mammel himself knows the stories of his grandparents who had to flee across the Balkans to Germany at the end of World War II.

In the paintings, he also refers indirectly to his own childhood, a boy playing on the beach or looking into the water in a moment of introspection and innocence that will inevitably disappear. Other images are more symbolic like the man wading through the water or explicit with refugees in a winter landscape or a monkey screeching out of anger and frustration.

Dieter Mammel paints with ink on wet canvas that consequently flows into veiled but intense pictures that connect to memories and dream images. The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue TRANSIT.

Some years ago, Jan Brokof (1977) discovered the story of 16th century adventurer Hans Staden who survived a stay with a Brazilian cannibal tribe. In describing the Indians and their customs, he sketches an image of the new world but in doing so, defines himself at the same time as a European who thinks from Western values.

Brokof used this perspective to create works in which the fascination with the unknown and the other is at the core. In his latest series of collage drawings Cannibal Politics, he applies the phenomenon of cannibalisation in a cultural sense, by mixing elements from pop and internet culture with classical and historical imagery.

In the collage drawings, he uses acrylic on paper to paint galleons, nudes, tropical landscapes and waves in a poster-like style. He thus incorporates current events and history, the self-created and existing images.
Jan Brokof sees his method of Cannibal Politics as a therapy for modern society.