Gert & Uwe Tobias
January 28 - November 18, 2012
For the Kunstverein Hamburg, Gert & Uwe Tobias (*1973 in Brasov,  
Romania, live in Cologne) have developed an installation that turns  
the entire premises of the building into a fantastic headspace. From  
the foyer, up the stairs into the two exhibition halls, their works  
will be presented from January to April 2012 over a total area of  
1,300 square metres. This exhibition is the biggest undertaking for  
the two artists and their largest exhibition to date. Part of their  
installation will then disappear to make room for presentations by  
other artists until, by the end of the year, only the foyer and  
staircase remain. What all these exhibitions (by Alexandra Bircken,  
Florian Baudrexel and Manuel Graf et al.) will have in common is the  
shift between seemingly folkloristic and handicraft-oriented everyday  
practices and constructivist abstraction.

Since completing their studies, Gert & Uwe Tobias have been  
collaborating in drawings, ceramics, and woodcuts, which they assemble  
into overall installations, often held together by coloured walls and  
spatial interventions. They are associated not only externally but  
also in folkloristic motifs that they are taken from collective  
societal structures, memories and traditions. They can even be  
inspired by their mother's knitting patterns. Domesticated motifs,  
which the two transfer to their woodcuts and typewriter drawings.  
Their woodcuts are produced as puzzle prints, a method in which the  
picture is produced from a block composed of separate elements. Only  
two prints are produced of each woodcut, flying in the face of mass  
production. Gert & Uwe Tobias set up a poster before each exhibition  
which the viewer encounters like a signpost. Like the cover of a book,  
it opens up the surreal space to the visitor in which the narration of  
the individual elements unfolds.

Other aspects in their exhibitions also have pragmatic points of  
departure: they present their small-scale ceramics largely on plinths  
that have a second one in the form of everyday objects. Some grow like  
bottle djinns out of vases, others stand on plates or butter dishes  
and coffee pots. The ceramics are not unrelated to household  
porcelain: there is a resemblance in their materiality and processing.  
Everyday life with its everyday objects as the basis of existence.

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Der Kunstverein, seit 1817.
Beate Anspach
Presse und Öffentlichkeit
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
Tel. +49(0)40 32 21 58
Fax +49(0)40 32 21 59
www.kunstverein.de

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Upcoming:
11. Mai - 2. September 2012
Alexandra Bircken