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until 27.02. | #2948ARTatBerlin | EIGENHEIM Berlin shows from 22nd January 2021 the exhibition Slag Hook by the artist Christoph Blankenburg as solo show in the Salon of the gallery.
Slag is a by-product of steelmaking, naturally similar in texture to volcanic rock. The slag hook, in turn, is the tool with which the metal smelter pulls this by-product out of the blast furnace. In this sense, the title of the exhibition can be understood as a connecting element between nature and man or industry and craft – because this is precisely where Christoph Blankenburg‘s work is to be situated.
Christoph Blankenburg, Snipet, Architekturmodel, 2018
Christoph Blankenburg fires enamel panels to color intensive abstract landscape paintings or enamel objects whose forms are borrowed from nature or everyday industrial life, he explores the rural idyll and reclaims it as a stage in his video works, he draws uninhibitedly and powerfully, courageously without any hint of mannerism, he performs physically revealing often in direct dialogue with people or local occurrences, his photographs are experiments with physical laws of light or attentive observations of nature.
Christoph Blankenburg, Er war da, Videostandbild, 2020
Blankenburg sees himself as a scientist who takes his legitimation for research from the freedom of art. In this way, the artist makes us believe that he can disregard gravity and suspend other laws of nature. In his search for tipping moments, he breaks habits, develops cryptic plot lines with the aim of questioning our own perception. As a kind of transmitter, he has the ability to transport something from the off stage to the surface and to create situations that slide into the absurd.
Christoph Blankenburg, o.T. (Werksfoto), 2014
If you look at the different ways of working as a whole, a comprehensible picture develops with cross-references in terms of content and form. For example, many of the Emalie panels and drawings can be understood as stage designs that are closely related to the movement patterns of his video and performance works. In these, in turn, Blankenburg explores the potential of scenic and civilisational occurrences, whether forests or viaducts, as a stage, developing his own mythological creatures such as the moor bear as protagonists or embedding unpredictable encounters with people in the plot. The various set pieces of artistic interaction, intervention and performance are thereby integrated into an artistically abstract structure, as in the experimental documentaries „Rennsteigflimmern 1 (2015), 2 (2018) and 3 (2020)“.
In the exhibition at EIGENHEIM Berlin (Salon), the versatility of Christoph Blankenburg‘s artistic work can be experienced in a manner similar to a show depot. The smell of resin, the large enamel works, the photographs and drawings are shown on storage shelves, as are the video and object works.
Biography
1983 born in Erfurt as Christoph Lenz
2019 24th Federal Prize for Art Students, Bundes-Kunsthalle, Bonn
2018 Bauhaus Essentials 9
2017 GRAFE Creative Prize of Bauhaus – Universität Weimar
2014 – 2019 Initiation of NEWSYMP
(Symposium on Enamel) in Erfurt
2007 – 2019 Study Visual Communication, Bauhaus – Universität Weimar
2002 – 2004 Training as technical draftsman /
Vernissage: Saturday, 22 January 2021 from 7:00 p.m. (online)
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 22 January to Saturday, 27 February 2021
To the Gallery
Exhibition Christoph Blankenburg – EIGENHEIM Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
