we recently exhibited friedhelm tschentscher's work together with wolfgang schmidt as the artists of “kassler concrete”, who studied and taught in kassel at the time, including krieglstein, böhm, fritz, schmidt, kallhardt, müller-domnick, schwitzki, tschentscher. it was the time of the second documenta, which they also helped to prepare. structurally…. road construction as well as internally. from him we are showing his mostly white wall reliefs and sculptures made of steel, iron, wood, and very early works of white and colorless acrylic glass from 1965, work from the circle and square, round and cube working groups.
it was the time when the module was valued, and people who can and want to build something, such as lars englund, who, among other things, created open spheres, suspended, insightful systems with its metal modules - without inner secrets.
acrylic as colorless, transparent plates, hollow, easily reproducible, colored elements, such as white elements, gave artists the opportunity to create transparent structures that made it possible to gain insight, at the same time offering various views of connections, and let the light in, consciously and fundamentally as free and unpredictable co-creaters. urbasek, krieglstein, staudt, böhm, demartini, soto o.a. from friedhelm tschentscherthere are few, in the inner multi-layer cubes and pillars. his non-transparent cross- section is the hollow white hemisphere and its opposite half, the transparent hemisphere.
despite these stimuli, tschentscher turns away, to other, very fundamental oppositions. the heavy cube made of solid stone and the massive ball and their relationships, taking the form of penetrations. to the cube as the hard, the heavy, the immobile, and the ball as the symbol of rolling, of movement. he never attacks these shapes, deforms them or destroys them. he imagines cuts through them that he retraces. principles of form, such as the straight edge of the cube and the smooth, clear curve as part of the ball that you want to touch and stroke, are always there. during the course of his long career he worked on stone sculptures, steel, and iron sculptures, sculptures made of wood and graphite, wood only, portable, related to human strength, their illusion of heaviness, but without causing fear that one could be crushed. he worked alone, without an assistant, whose possible suggestions for the shape of the sculpture would have bothered him.
later, when the massive bodies were too difficult for him to move, he left the floor as his point of view and chose the white wall as a fixed space for his often white or black wall reliefs, these are part of an imagined physical wall-penetration of a sculpture, the origin of which is the penetration of cube and ball. a presented cut separates something, a part of the cube always remains as a hard edge on the wall, from this part the ball emerges as a curved shape, parts of a circle in its cut shape. a light inner wooden construction enables a curved covering with canvas, parts of the presented sculptural form penetrate here as a curved line, which he uses as a form, as a stabilizer, as parts of a basin that captures or blocks light. these white reliefs are of astonishing strength in constant painterly movement. from every point of view, determined solely by the height of the viewer, at the moment of viewing, the brightness of daylight, the influences of the surrounding room, its color, its cast light. his works are moving, even though they seem stable at first. friedhelm tschentscher died at the beginning of the year.
pip culbert‘s textile works are work without textiles, not totally, the seams and thus the construction are preserved, the useful fabric was cut out. everyday clothing, shopping bags, including bedding, tents, garment bags. things we know, have worn on our bodies. the apron around the round belly, the skirt, the pants, remind us, the struggle with the zipper, or the trouble with the shirt collar and the twisted cuffs. pip saw that as a living theater, even when it lay limp on the floor.
she worked in many layers, first the living theater, her desire and knowledge drawn from these things, smoothing these shapes, stretching them flat on the wall and nailing them down. to freeze the action and have it pinned to the wall just as a note. here she sees the intelligent possibilities of a flat plane of construction. she was not interested in traces of use, in holes, traces, history. the intelligence of the system for the production of textiles and the cost savings when considering this construction are of little interest to her. (as many aprons as possible from one fabric width, fewer working hours ...)
she doesn't reveal, she discovers. in the limp, now worthless garment she sees the construction plan and can choose a garment for her later flat work pinned to the wall. now she is cutting away the fabric, almost away, because the construction consists of the seams, the zippers and the buttons, made of and on the fabric. she lets them stand. these work steps form her construction lines. once chosen, she takes everything, a breast pocket hangs loose from the shirt, this later forms a separate group of work with the subtle charm of the differences. pip does not take an attractive detail and throws away the rest of the garment. taking everything with this “honesty” also shows, that the many fashionable differences arise from a few construction plans, for people with 2 legs, a belly and buttocks, a bosom and neck and a head which thinks up countless professions and therefore needs perhaps many different garments. her selection always tended towards simple objects, later towards the selection of cushions, bags, pillows, bedding, she amazed herself. these bring her more and more in the direction of geometric shapes.
