Konrad Klapheck. Venus ex machina

About

In 1955, Konrad Klapheck set out to paint a typewriter in as much detail as possible, taking the opposite tack to the lyrical abstraction that then dominated the European art scene. This was the start of a long and fruitful career for the artist, who devoted nearly four decades to painting machines and objects whose chilly detachment forms a striking contrast with the symbolic aura conferred on them.

        His friendship with the Parisian Surrealists led him to imbue his various machines, utensils, and tubes with meaning rooted in visual and psychological associations. Tubes dribble, shoe trees slot into each other, machines crush, prick, insert, shake, and click in evocation of the beloved, the father, the mother, and all sorts of debauchery suppressed by a sense of prudish reserve.

        Only in 1997 did he eventually give himself permission to bring human figures into compositions that remained as strict as ever. Sensuality and humour became a more explicit presence, yet the overarching themes remained the same: Klapheck's art approaches human relations as (social) constructions, machinations, even orchestrations, while simultaneously laying bare his own life narrative, couched in terms so allusive as to offer universal relevance.

        With one final typewriter, an old man's last look back at his initial foray into research, the exhibition offers a retrospective overview of Klapheck's musical and erotic artworks as an introduction to his earlier works.

Konrad Klapheck was born in 1935 in Düsseldorf, where he still lives.