Michael Sailstorfer
Raum und Zeit
26 March–3 July 2011
A curious spectator of everyday life
Citadelpark, 9000 Ghent
Belgium
www.smak.be
Central to this exhibition are the two components that shape our reality: time and space. It is precisely these two components that Michael Sailstorfer tries to influence. In his experiments of how a droning sound fills a room or how the smell of burning rubber slowly but surely takes over the whole museum, he poses the question of how sculptures occupy space, how they expand beyond their physical size and how we, the spectator, relate to this.
Sailstorfer is an image-maker in the most literal sense of the term. Through the artistic transformation of everyday objects and places, he creates tangibly poetic images dealing with the states of euphoria to disintegration. Absurd failure and tragicomedy play as important a part in his work as the question of the space a sculpture is able to occupy: sometimes the viewers’ senses of hearing and smell are attacked. Sailstorfer’s often processual and theatrical works also operate within the tension between such contradictory concepts as homeland and remoteness, mobility and standstill, noise and quite, or light and darkness. Destruction, recombination, and transformation are his basic compositional principles. Despite the vehemence of his artistic metamorphoses, Sailtorfer’s works always have a characteristic background melancholy.
Above all, Sailstorfer is a curious spectator of everyday life. His work presents us with a surprising and poetic view of the reality that surrounds us. Like a child who explores the world and tries to control it, Sailstorfer transforms everyday objects into aesthetic images that question man’s position in time and space.
The exhibition Raum und Zeit is accompanied by the monograph “Michael Sailstorfer: S” published by DISTANZ-Verlag, which presents Sailstorfer’s work from 2000 to 2010. It is edited by S.M.A.K. and its partner institutions the kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (DE) and the Kunsthalle Nürnberg (DE). The volume contains texts by Veit Goerner, Philippe van Cauteren, Ellen Seifermann, Martin Germann, Thomas Caron, Michael Sailstorfer, Kristin Schrader and Birgit Sonna.
For more information on the exhibition:
Eline Verbauwhede | T: +32 9 240 76 60 | eline.verbauwhede@smak.be
www.smak.be, T: +32 9 240 76 01
Citadelpark, 9000 Ghent
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*Image above:
©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Courtesy Johann König, Berlin and the artist.
