Claas Gutsche - Schatten

About

Wagner + Partner is pleased to announce the fourth solo exhibition of Claas Gutsche (b. 1982), whose remarkable and often large-format lino prints have become increasingly popular. These lino prints plumb not only the medium – in terms of a multi-faceted, subtle gradation of greys – but also thematically shift through similar ‘transitional states’. A darkly romantic landscape, as an atmospheric place of collective as well as subjective horror, including ambivalently modern architecture of the fading former Eastern bloc, are examples of the explorations for his work in recent years.   

With the central work, Leak, Gutsche takes up this thread and twists it further. This monumental lino print at 250 x 375 cm, illustrates the abandoned US espionage station on Berlin’s Teufelsberg. The work depicts the once futuristic and now decaying white radomes that the NSA employed, to listen in as far as the Eastern bloc. The buildings in Gutsche’s work still refer to a former era and yet nature is at work to reclaim it. Leak is an ambiguous title, given that espionage is no longer active and has moved on to the Internet. We are currently in the midst of a fundamental transition.

Whilst the function and symbolism of architecture is subject to historic change, it is apparent that nature has always known continuity and transformation. For instance when nature reclaims human settlements or buildings it is often coupled prematurely with romanticism. Claas Gutsche twists this thread ever further by supplementing his lino prints with unique objects cast in bronze, which unite fragments of nature and civilisation. These objects are situated within the exhibition context through their subtle associations and acquiescence.

Gutsche was most recently recognised in the Swiss museum Franz Gertsch with a solo exhibition and catalogue.