Kunstraum Richard Sorge initiated an ongoing series of large international confrontational Arts & Crafts and fake folk exhibitions, the second of which takes place May, 2009. Titled Strich & Faden, the exhibition project offers subversive travesties of craft and folklore, crafty travesties of high art, and works that thematize Heimat (heritage), gender roles & identity in innovative or humorous ways.
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Peeter Allik - EST (linocut/lithoprint) pdf
The masterful linocuts of Estonian artist Peeter Allik explore Europe's traditional values, murderous ideologies and not quite so innocent folklore. The work is traditional in appearance, refreshingly sarcastic in tone.
Walter Bruno Brix - DE (embroidery) pdf
Cologne based Japanese textile craft expert/curator/restorer Walter Bruno Brix is also active as artist, and has created an extensive body of work in embroidery/applique, in which he uses art historical, often religious, themes.
Ulrich Diezmann - DE (painting) pdf
Adopting traditional genre painting, like landscape and horse painting, without the usual tong-in cheek attitude of postmodernism, Diezmann explores their value, and skillfully invests these types of painting with a contemporary sensibility.
Rinaldo Hopf - DE (painting) pdf
Hopf makes a journey through German history by appropriating youth culture images from various era, which are silk-screened on corresponding historic fabrics. In a creative process of wistful thinking and empathy, Hopf places his own image as a youth among them.
Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene - LT (embroidery on scrap metal) pdf
Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene takes pleasure in things that are only insignificant details to most people. Urbane concepts of beauty and utilitarian things inspire and form the basis of her work. Placing kitsch in a new context allows her to reveal her personal experience and point of view.
Garth Johnson - USA (recycled collector's plates) pdf
Strich & Faden II presents recycled overpainted Hümmel collector's plates by Garth Johnson, the Eureka, CA based writer, artist and tireless hyperactive educator known for his "raging craft problem". His website, Extreme Craft is a "compendium of art masquerading as craft, craft masquerading as art and craft raising its middle finger".
Ai Kijima - USA (quilted collage) pdf
"Ai Kijima was born and raised in Tokyo, attended high school in Wisconsin, and currently lives in New York
City. She tirelessly combs through thrift stores for novelty fabrics and combines them with timeless vintage fabrics. The result is an impeccably crafted narrative that has both humor and depth." - Garth Johnson, Extreme Crafts 2008
Charles Krafft - USA (sculpture/ceramics) pdf
After years toiling as "the oldest promising young artist in the Pacific Northwest," Charles Krafft became known internationally in the 90's for subversive works in clay that were among the first to invest craft objects with serious and sarcastic content starkly contrasting with their perceived image. In Strich & Faden, Krafft presents new work made of bread as well.
Charles Krafft uses and undermines the ethnocentrism and traditionalism of craft objects to comment on "resurgent regionalism", war, politics and disaster. The way Charles Krafft eschews the usual careerism in the arts and finds alternative ways, is just as radical and political, as is the choice of influences: 60's comix, and the aesthetics and themes of Industrial-, surf- and custom car cultures.
Nava Lubelski - USA (embroidery) pdf
The artist is known for her witty, stylistically elaborate feminist parodies of the classic drip painting, in which she plays with the contrast between male/female and action/reflection. Lubelski invites us to reflect on the cultural meaning of the stain and mending, and woman's relation to it.
Natasza Niedziolka - DE (painting) pdf
Berlin based Natasza Niedziolka takes the designs and patterns of Eastern European folklore fashion as the basis of her compositions and faux-primitive wooden sculptures, the Peacock Towers.
The genius incongruous coupling of traditional naif colors and compositions with punk painterly execution and sensibility adds up to vibrant and surprising work.
David Rios Ferreira - USA (gouache painting) pdf
Blending folklore with personal narrative, Ferreira's drawings and videos explore the construction and deconstruction of self, drawing upon the hybridity of culture, ethnicity, language
and sexuality.
Schalalala Knitting Circle - DE (knitting/social sculpture/net-art) pdf
In its Fan Scarf Remix Project, taking place both on- and offline, the Schalalala Knitting Circle synthesizes many artistic techniques, disciplines and activities: Geek Crafting, Net-art, Social Media, real life knitting circles. It takes as its starting point one of the ultimate expressions of urban tribalism: The hooligan fan scarf, and turns its sectarian aspect into a positive cosmopolitan multicultural statement.
Johanna Schweizer - NL (fiber sculpture) pdf
Johanna Schweizer is often - lazily - described as the Dutch Louise Bourgeois. This may refer to the surrealist aspects of her work; her perseverance and consistent vision; or the long time it took for the world to catch up with her work.
The artist's extensive collection of crocheted fiber sculptures is both profound and witty, it alludes to a wide array of themes, from cross-genderness and cross-speciesness; to religious suffering and sexual ritual. Folkloric, pagan, and fairy tale elements are incorporated as well, the sensually playful and the deadly serious going hand in hand.
Hunter Stabler - USA (paper cutting) pdf
Hunter Stabler creates delicate multi-layered hand-cut paper compositions of elaborate patterning and religious/mythological symbols. His work involves a formal play between the illusion of space, actual physical shadow, and the flat two-dimensions of the paper.
Sztuka Fabryka - BE (street-art/social sculpture) pdf
While most Street-artists are obsessed with appearing "urban" and in rehashing the same old hip hop cultural "urban" themes end up looking quite suburban, Sztuka Fabryka brilliantly breaks through the restrictive and tired ideology of Street-art by going rural, introducing traditional, regionalist, folkloristic and even religious themes and designs.
Tulip Enterprises - NL/DE (over painted vintage porcelain)
In their Ceramixed Plates, the artists take vintage porcelain plates as their canvas, overpainting them with sexual or political imagery.
Georg Weise - DE (painting) pdf
The painter collects old flea market paintings - so called "Heimatbilder" portraying the beauty of the German or Middle-European countryside - and over paints them with his current subject: romantic depictions of teenage boys in a state of gracefulness.
The folksy German expression "nach Strich und Faden" means to do something thoroughly, with great artistry and precision, or according to the rules of an art or craft. In contemporary language the term has gained connotations of trickery, deceit and travesty: our belief in authenticity has gone. Travesty (in the sense of deceit and role playing) is a device present in many works in this show, either as an artistic attitude, or as a subject matter. The participating artists use it to subvert both the traditions of Art & Crafts and our expectations of art. While often humorous, works like these nonetheless make serious and inspired, often subtly political statements.
This new edition of Strich und Faden presents outstanding representatives of the thriving US-american "confrontational Arts & Crafts" scene - some of which are shown in Germany (or Europe) for the first time - and presents them alongside their (Eastern) European colleagues. Strich und Faden II goes beyond ironic crafting however, also incorporating conceptual and neo-traditional works on folklore, personal mythology and regionalism.
Open: April 29 - June 20, 2009
Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, 3 - 7 pm,
and by appointment.
