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“Open Ambiguous”: Hannes Uhlenhaut
2023-05-05

Taoxichuan Jingdezhen International Studio is very pleased to invite Germany artist, Hannes Uhlenhaut. He will present a lecture 'open  ambiguous' Wednesday, October 23rd, at Ceramic Art Avenue Flagship Store 2nd-floor lecture hall at 19:30. The lecture will illuminates the last 5 years of Hannes Uhlenhaut artistic development, presents he curatorial projects and gives a short overview of contemporary artists who influence he a lot right now. 

 

Hannes Uhlenhaut

2019 Travel Grant of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony  and Goethe Institue China for Beijing, China. Artist in Residence at Red Gate Gallery in Beijing and at MAKESPACE in Jingdezhen

2019 Guest performance sponsorship Visual Arts, Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony

2018 Project Funding Masterclass (Curator/ Artist)

2015 Working scholarship LVA Saxony-Anhalt, Castle Hundisburg

2013 Ceramics in the „Pulverturm“, Oldenburg 2009 Award Ceramic Museum, Bürgel   

     

Soloexhibiton

2019 Eternity, (with Winnie Seifert) Curva Pura Rome (Italy)

2017 Seifert/Uhlenhaut, (with Winnie Seifert) The Room Studios, Rome (Italy)

2017 Die Verwandlung, Castle Bad Pyrmont (with Undine Bandelin) *

2017 blue birds singing white swans bringing (with Ralf Born), Kulturny Dom Lipsk, Leipzig

2015 Klischee Royal, Gallery Potemka, Leipzig

 

My artistic works are designed as open, ambiguous experiments in which different cultural influences and aesthetics are combined. I refer to models from art, mass media and pop culture and mutate their material and immaterial qualities to create new ambiguous works. I am particularly interested in the various narratives with which we try to explain reality and manifest domination. This cultural grid serves me as a laboratory and reference field for my artistic hacks. The concrete object, as well as its material nature, the context from which it originates and what it stands for play a significant role. In my works I am not interested in making a concrete statement, but rather in investigating processes of visual communication and playing with their corruptibility. 



My artistic process starts impulsively with an ambivalent image that usually combines several separate thematic fields. This is followed by a very intuitive and material-heavy processing process in which the thought is formed and manifested. This process can take several years and so I usually work on several works at the same time. This leads to interactions between the individual groups of works and their mutual interpenetration. The assemblage is of special importance in my work. I use found objects directly or transform material properties of these objects with the help of plaster molds into porcelain, in order to remove the original from the accustomed reception and at the same time preserve its essence. It is a thoughtful play with appearance and being that fascinates me.

 The works I have created over the past 10 years include objects and installations that refer particularly to works of Western art history. Especially in the first years of my work with porcelain, the presence of classical Ancients and Baroque models, which were combined with the aesthetics of American comic culture, is evident.

My working process is additive, which has the consequence that the works tend to become more and more complex. Against the background of the hip hop culture that shaped my youth, my affinity for sampling, crossover and a fundamental scepticism about authoritarian structures becomes understandable.

While my first works were largely figurative, in recent years a detachment from the figure and a movement towards abstraction can be observed. My formal language becomes more generous, new materials like plaster, metal and objects of the fashion world find their way into my practice. However, the abstract phase does not replace the figurative phase; rather, there are now two fields on which I work.    

Another aspect of my artistic work is curating exhibitions. Since 2015 I have been working on the project Master Class, which has meanwhile appeared with two exhibitions in Germany, Cold Turkey 2017 in Hanover and Arsenal 2018 in Leipzig. Since 2016 the project Just Physical has been running, a biennial sculpture exhibition in a boxing hall in Leipzig. In 2018 I was a founding member of the exhibition space Kunsthalle Ost in Leipzig. I see curatorial practice as an extension of my artistic work that enables me to engage in an intensive exchange with the contemporary art scene.  

 

Hannes Uhlenhaut