WOLFGANG STEHLE

"Parkland"

Opening Reception: Friday, 13 November 2009, 7pm
14 November 2009 through 9 January 2010
Tuesday through Saturday 11-6 pm

The exhibition Parkland is Wolfgang Stehle’s second solo show at KUTTNER SIEBERT Galerie. Decisive here is parkland’s aesthetic appropriation by humanity, even if the moment of design is quite extremely minimal. Wolfgang Stehle transfers this relationship to his sculptures and installations. His interest is in the pivotal moment between representation and abstraction and the reversal of fundamental relations like inside and outside. Under these conditions, the beholder finds himself or herself placed in an exhibition space where the walls are covered with a wallpaper that shows an image of a stylized forest. At the center of the space is a ragged sculpture that in its rudimentary form is reminiscent of architecture, but on closer inspection does not seem able to fulfill this promise, but only appears to be capable of causing a disturbance. Closer inspection reveals that the structure is a solid black body where amorphously shaped, thin wooden panels are applied to the outside in camouflage like colors. Sometimes they seem to float, for their shiny surface sets them apart from the dull black of the underlying structure, which devours all reflections.

The form of the object remains too abstract to evoke associations of built models or a different function. The transformation by the artist can no longer be traced back to its origins and all that is visible is the dissolution process of an external form. The collage-like drawings of Wolfgang Stehle are sometimes more, sometimes less concrete in terms of form. Ultimately, they are not so much a visual section of the world, but rather a fragment of a sculptural idea. Despite their transformation in symbolic terms, they retain their sculptural autonomy, for volumes created by way of individual cuts and shadings are not represented in a painterly fashion, but in the selection of various materials.

For Wolfgang Stehle, the representation of nature is both content and form. His drive is less the longing to create images true to nature but rather to illustrate the limit the makes up the changing relation between nature and civilization. This limit lies in aesthetic appropriation and accordingly finds its expression in Wolfgang Stehle in objects that are autonomous in terms of composition, which exude a natural self-evidence.