Wermke Leinkauf

Today it is regarded as entirely normal for two artists to throw their work together – there have been many famous examples over the past thirty-five years. It is something special, however, when two very different characters join forces, especially when this seems unlikely from the outset simply because of their different places and fields of study. Yet Matthias Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf are linked by something that has all their lives run counter to a career mapped out at the drawing board – the two have known each other since their youth from the East Berlin graffiti scene. And here we plunge into a wild and spectacular background that so inimitably characterises the pair’s work today. Take, for example, the following film by the two young artists: a man is hanging by his outstretched arms from some lower edge or other – of a bridge, of a crane or of whatever it may be. And just when you are about to place a bet on how much longer he can hold out, he pulls himself back up – or perhaps he simply lets himself fall?! In the installation “Entscheidungen” this situation is seen again and again on ten monitors, from different perspectives and always in different places. In this way viewers are at least given the chance to grow accustomed to the extraordinariness of the event. And because habituation usually sets in very quickly, it gives rise to a completely unspecific interest – for instance in actions that are repeatedly disrupted without any plan, in prohibitions that become everyday matters, in the observation of actions that appear impossible. And so all at once new possibilities emerge, of the kind that as a rule only a “topsy-turvy world” holds in store. As Matthias Wermke and Mischa Leinkauf themselves write in a project sketch, what is at stake is thus a voyage of discovery, an unusual way of dealing with public space in which the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Viewers are simply and quite spontaneously to become aware of free spaces – in the literal sense – that the artists have conquered in a highly acrobatic and rather subversive manner. This book is the first monographic publication on the artist duo and brings together all the actions they have carried out together to date. In 2012 the two artists received the Columbus-Förderpreis für aktuelle Kunst.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 20/7–15/9/2013