*HURZLMEIER/FÜLLEMANN*

About

HURZLMEIER / FÜLLEMANN: A Manual

1. Look at the room.
2. Try not to immediately create a connection between the sculptures and the paintings. Understand them as single entities.
3. Look better. 
4. Accept the instinctive shallowness of your judgment. Observe the basics of visual arts you’re confronted with: the colors, the shapes, the formats, the volumes.
5. Imagine a shy dog walking around the room. The dog comes up to you and from maybe half a meter, he starts sniffling your knee, then walks away to another corner of the gallery.
6. While looking at the exhibition, imagine a dancer taking over the dog’s role. A Martha Graham type athlete, all sinewy muscles and edgy bones. He dances around with poise and energy.
7. Think of your mom, or your sister, or your girlfriend, your wife, your grandma in a various set of situations. Hugging you, shouting, laughing, gazing out of a window.
8. Pick a single painting, observe it closely and contract your buttocks for 20 seconds while doing so.
9. Exhale.

Full press text by Karim Crippa here: http://duveberlin.com/exhibition/hurzlmeier-fullemann

Christopher Füllemann (*1983, CH) builds sculptures both familiarly strange and strangely familiar. He views himself as a guide to the materials he uses, which range from foam to fabric, metal or concrete. Füllemann doesn’t shy away from letting “accidents” happen to his pieces, allowing him to progress towards unexpected results and reconsider his work from new perspectives. Forms reminiscent of limbs are often included in his works, quoting from figuration and infusing them with a subtle blend of humor. With a background in painting, his pieces are stations on a road towards understanding and taming the essence of materiality; focused on capturing this essence, as well as gestures and light, Füllemann ultimately aims for the (re)invention of a new sculptural grammar.

Leonhard Hurzlmeier’s (*1983, DE) paintings show humanoid beings, mostly female, wherein geometrical elements of extreme flatness form constructions of flesh and fabric. The subjects of his paintings allude to historical representations of women in the arts; at the same time, they often represent contemporary female personae from everyday life. Behind these seemingly harmless images lies an inherent questioning of both our perception of art and women in society. Hurzlmeier spends weeks on every layer of paint he applies, ending up with iconographies both obviously recognisable and strangely foreign. The tight frame, the play with abstraction, the dislocation of the body, the glossiness and regularity of the paint all lead up to a critical confrontation with current and past aesthetics, topical duplicity and complex visual codes.