Olaf Metzel: Kaffee, Zeitung, Zigaretten

Pure brilliance

This book on the special exhibition of the Kunstverein Heilbronn in the Kunsthalle Vogelmann with Olaf Metzel brings together for the first time a wide-ranging and opulently illustrated selection of the new group of works "Zeitungsarbeiten" (newspaper works). In them, monumental size is naturally combined with extreme fragility, and as if the reader had angrily crumpled up the morning newspaper and thrown it away, Olaf Metzel folds, creases and crumples huge aluminium plates which, despite their oversized format, look confusingly similar to their colourful models. However, Olaf Metzel's newspaper pages endure, the white, soft paper seems to be frozen in the bulky and cutting aluminium plates. The result of this aesthetic of devastation are attractive reliefs that have their classical models in art history. It is no wonder that viewers stand mesmerised in front of the work on the life and death of Amy Winehouse, for example, as it directly and simply illustrates the hopelessness and rage imprinted on her life.
With intellectual brilliance and empathy, Olaf Metzel has found an irresistible combination of content and style. And he has always been ready to put his finger in the wound! Not long ago, he attracted howls of rage and death threats with a female nude cast in bronze - the subject of art history par excellence for centuries - thanks to a telling detail: Because the nude is wearing a headscarf. Olaf Metzel, however, puts it succinctly: successful aesthetic production = provocation - that's all art can claim for itself today!

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, Kunsthalle Vogelmann, 16/3 - 23/6/2013