Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany
Saatchi Gallery's current exhibition 'Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany' brings together works by recognised artists living and working in Germany today. In an all round exciting and diverse collection, there were certainly some stand out artists for me. Alexandra Bircken, born in Cologne, claims her stretcher frame sculptures are influenced by her background in fashion design, and an interest in material culture; her 2008 piece 'Unit 1' (and detail), & left, incorporates aluminium rods, polyurethane foam, fabric and wool to manipulate 'traditional painting and sculpture into icons of vernacular art and craft.' For me, Bircken's work exploits the tension between formal, traditional artistic containers such as the frame as in 'Unit 1', and the organic, almost uncontrollable forms of her textile craft objects. Bircken herself states her works attempts at 'dismantling prevailing hierarchies of value regarding these objects and materials by way of connecting them, thus putting them in a new context to each other', while playing with an ambiguity between what is real and what is "fabricated". 
I was notably intrigued by the more figurative pieces, such as works by Josephine Meckseper and Georg Herold; Herold's overtly sexual and almost fetishised figures. Personally, the use of stitching, as seen in the detail of his Untitled 2011 work, right, suggests almost a sense of bodily mutation, or perhaps reconstruction, linking back to my earlier exploration into the ideas of constructed bodies. The Saatchi states 'Herold’s work plays with our expectations of what it is we are seeing, what art is, or should be, and with the artist’s role in making meaning and challenging the viewer', bringing into his work ideas of Barthes' 'The Death of the Author', and questions of ownership, while the artist believes through his work 'I intend to reach a state that is ambiguous and allows all sorts of interpretations'.
Saatchi Gallery's current exhibition 'Gesamtkunstwerk: New Art From Germany' brings together works by recognised artists living and working in Germany today. In an all round exciting and diverse collection, there were certainly some stand out artists for me. Alexandra Bircken, born in Cologne, claims her stretcher frame sculptures are influenced by her background in fashion design, and an interest in material culture; her 2008 piece 'Unit 1' (and detail), & left, incorporates aluminium rods, polyurethane foam, fabric and wool to manipulate 'traditional painting and sculpture into icons of vernacular art and craft.' For me, Bircken's work exploits the tension between formal, traditional artistic containers such as the frame as in 'Unit 1', and the organic, almost uncontrollable forms of her textile craft objects. Bircken herself states her works attempts at 'dismantling prevailing hierarchies of value regarding these objects and materials by way of connecting them, thus putting them in a new context to each other', while playing with an ambiguity between what is real and what is "fabricated".
I was notably intrigued by the more figurative pieces, such as works by Josephine Meckseper and Georg Herold; Herold's overtly sexual and almost fetishised figures. Personally, the use of stitching, as seen in the detail of his Untitled 2011 work, right, suggests almost a sense of bodily mutation, or perhaps reconstruction, linking back to my earlier exploration into the ideas of constructed bodies. The Saatchi states 'Herold’s work plays with our expectations of what it is we are seeing, what art is, or should be, and with the artist’s role in making meaning and challenging the viewer', bringing into his work ideas of Barthes' 'The Death of the Author', and questions of ownership, while the artist believes through his work 'I intend to reach a state that is ambiguous and allows all sorts of interpretations'.
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