Marcel van Eeden, Tobias Gerber, Leo Kogan
Elmar Trenkwalder, Dick Tuinder
drawings
15 November – 21 December 2008
In the exposition five different positions in contemporary drawing are presented. Marcel van Eeden and Elmar Trenkwalder are regular artists of the gallery, Tobias Gerber, Leo Kogan en Dick Tuinder are invited to participate in the show.
Marcel van Eeden (1965) has worked on an impressive collection of drawings for years, using pictures and photographs dating from before his birth in 1965. These past years he introduced an element of fiction in his drawings by having a fictional character undergo adventures on the basis of existing visual material. In the present exhibition a series of portraits is shown of people whose names end in ‘-Witz’. The drawings are arranged on a dark-painted wall in the way of an installation, just as he recently did in the Kunstverein Heidelberg.
Tobias Gerber (1961) makes austere charcoal drawings possessing a mysterious tension. The representations seem to be almost casual and natural, but soon prove to contain absurd and bizarre elements. Sometimes these are subtle, such as the two wounded soldiers looking at each other while they are being carried away on stretchers in opposite directions. In other drawings, such as Dr Watson, the bizarre is predominant when the bodies of Holmes and Watson blend into each other mirrorwise like the figures on a playing card.
Leo Kogan’s (1974) drawings seem to reflect visions from a dream, for instance, a room is half flooded and has a window in the shape of an enormous eye. A man is crawling on the wet floor towards a ball that has landed on the water. Kogan draws his representations with great precision, which even increases the alienating effect. Apart from these drawings a series of works is to be seen which Kogan drew and painted in water colours on letters of rejection he received in reply to applications for subsidy and exhibitions.
The Austrian artist Elmar Trenkwalder (1958) evokes an almost mystical world in his drawings, sometimes reminiscent of the visionary drawings of William Blake. With Trenkwalder there is always a mingling of eroticism and architecture, presented as a mysterious service in spaces resembling churches or temples. Columns have phallic forms and ornaments turn out to be composed of entwined human figures. The exuberant form language is closely related to the baroque architecture once flourishing in Austria.
Dick Tuinder (1963) is a draughtsman as well as a writer and film-maker. He usually makes cartoonish drawings having a narrative character. The work at the exhibition was influenced by the landscape scenery he is making at the moment for his film Winterland, which is expected to premiered at the next Rotterdam Filmfestival. Although the mountain landscapes and urban environments are empty, they are suggestive, tempting us to fill them in with a story or human act.