Christof Mascher1979

Whenever facets of the dream are spoken of, irritation and fascination follow. Dreams confront us with worlds of experience that present themselves in a manner as evident as it is enigmatic, differently from the everyday experiences of lived reality. This distinction links the dream with intoxication and madness, states of being that count as exceptions and are only rarely, or only to a few, accessible. Dreams stand for another, a transcendent level that cannot be unequivocally verified. Even if we cannot retrace our dreams in detail, we know that they exist and that we live with them. What is meant is not only dreams during sleep, but also those we experience during the day, withdrawn, lost in thought. „Daydreams are the most important. I have them when I sit quietly in my armchair and let my thoughts drift entirely relaxed,“ David Lynch said in an interview in 1997. „When you are asleep you do not steer your dreams. I like to submerge myself in a dream world that I have created or discovered myself; a world that I choose.“ Christof Mascher shares Lynch’s view: „I am fascinated by dreams as such, or rather by how they work. They have the structure of a story. I want to capture the feeling of dreams. For me the best thing is to combine simple stories with the feeling of a dream – with the abstractions that are possible in a dream.“ Even if the daydream cannot be regarded as the sole point of departure for Mascher’s work, it is nevertheless of considerable importance, especially if one gives particular consideration to one phenomenon: that of the fantastic. Mascher’s pictorial worlds are marked by strange hybrid creatures that can invariably be classified under the aspect of the fantastic and threatening. These figures are bound in a particular way to a force that appears frightening, an energy that manifests itself as a fundamental phenomenon in his work to date. In their various manifestations they stand for a permanent metamorphosis, for a constant rhythm of changing shape, from which human beings, too, are not immune. According to Mascher, the human being can no more be defined within fixed, staked-out boundaries than the animal can; rather, he is a living creature that can change its outward appearance according to the situation.Bird-like hybrid beings occupy a central place in numerous pictorial compositions, as they do in the miniature drawings on veneer wood, where such figures are found in ever new variations. His teacher Walter Dahn describes this as an „atmosphere as if after the Fourth World War“. The small catalogue is the first solo presentation of the artist, who was born in Hanover in 1979.

Exhibitions:
Galerie der Stadt Remscheid, 16/8 – 24/10/2008
Mönchehaus Museum für Moderne Kunst Goslar, 30/7 – 28/8/2008