Immanuel Rohringer and Frank Massholder | ARTISTIC STEPS | Galerie Z22 | 11.07.-31.08.2024.

bis 31.08. | #4341ARTatBerlin | Galerie Z22 shows from 11th July 2024 the exhibition ARTISTIC STEPS by the artists Immanuel Rohringer and Frank Massholder.

Galerie Z22 presents the exhibition “ARTISTIC STEPS” by Immanuel Rohringer and Frank Massholder.

Frank Massholder and Immanuel Rohringer dedicate themselves to the accidental beauty of floors in large series that have been running for years and are still unfinished today. While the art photographer and gallery owner Massholder finds his motifs during visits to his artists’ studios, the visual artist Rohringer creates them in experimental and open processes.

FRANK MASSHOLDER | LANDAUER #4 | 2023 | UV.DRUCK AUF ALUDIBOND BUTLERFINISH

Massholder calls his discoveries “concrete coincidences” and has been consistently “collecting” such “deliberate photographs of accidentally created objects” for years. In his words, the floors of artists’ studios are “snapshots of an artist’s inner landscape over the course of time. They are a collection of movements, colours, splashes, pieces of inspiration from each individual work that unintentionally document the artist’s work as a whole.”

IMMANUEL ROHRINGER | ARTISTIC STEPS | 1/30 | 2023 | MISCHTECHNIK AUF LEINWAND | 200 x 185

For him, such studio floors are “canvases that guide us through time and perhaps give us a rare glimpse of the artist in his most chaotic and yet most complete state”. He has turned this into an extensive long-term project, which also repeatedly leads to exciting collaborations.

IMMANUEL ROHRINGER | ARTISTIC STEPS | 9/20 | 2023 | MISCHTECHNIK AUF LEINWAND | 130 x 130

Rohringer in turn began his “Artistic Steps” series in 2016 (1/20) by laying out his unpainted canvas like a dance floor in the entrance area of a pop-up exhibition in a project space in Kreuzberg, on which all visitors initially left their traces. It was later “cleaned” using the technique of frottage and new traces were added.

Over the course of time, Rohringer has repeatedly experimented with different environments and time periods, from catwalks to his own studio, from short events to months of use. The resulting works show a very different relationship between conscious design and devotion to the accidental. What all these condensed documents of time have in common is that they were never created by the hand of an artist, but – not without a glance in the direction of Joseph Beuys – make everyone who has left their mark on the surface into artists, as it were. 
And so it seems as if both artists are paying homage to a peculiar phenomenon that can occur when you have spent a whole day with art.