Ralf ZiervogelAs If

AS IF – Sensational motifs extend across Ralf Ziervogel’s (*1975) lengths of paper, up to ten metres in size: without preliminary drawing, ink drawings arise showing palm-sized figures in extreme physical situations: they are bound, interlocked and knotted together. Delicate, complex drawings are devoted primarily to human bodies which sink into monochrome or merge into ornamental interlacings. In Ralf Ziervogel’s work human bodies become hybrid, feverish beings that pass through every conceivable metamorphosis of being and in doing so reach the limits of physical existence. Since 2014 he has been working on a cycle of prints in which, in a black gouache technique, he gives shape to fragmentary imprints on sheets up to five metres in size and creates entirely new kinds of dynamic bodies. Every movement, every pressing and smudging on the paper is accompanied by self-written, handwritten texts, which he stretches like a great spider’s web over the black imprints, thus arriving at a second level. His new works appear more abstract than the sensational works with which he caused a furore ten years ago; they also seem to be feeling their way towards a minimalist formal language through which the artist formulates a pair of opposites that does not stand at the beginning of his work: movement and stillness. Ralf Ziervogel, whose work has met with great public attention at the Art and Architecture Biennale in Venice, at the Kunsthalle Wien, at the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth/Texas, at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Deste Foundation in Athens, the maison rouge in Paris and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, is now being presented by the Deichtorhallen Hamburg on three floors with more than 200 works at the Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg-Harburg. The book may be described as the most comprehensive presentation to date of the work of this brilliant draughtsman.

Exhibition:
29/9/2018 – 17/3/2019Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Sammlung Falckenberg Hamburg-Harburg,