Florian Slotawa »Florian Slotawa«

Slotawa’s installations and sculptural works have always incorporated coloured objects—their individual hues, however, he did never alter any further. In his new body of work colours from our everyday surroundings are the starting point of an artistic process in which he relates them to found objects. He does not mix his own paints but uses the large range of auto lacquers by different car manufacturers from the 1980s and 1990s as his reference system to choose pre-existing hues. The process of lacquering accentuates the shapes and structures that already exist in the world of material things. In some works the artist combines the objects with monochrome lacquered panels—very often made from aluminium.

One of the wall-based sculptures consists of a folded metal trestle lacquered in the hue “Land Rover 603, Chawton White“. The simplicity of form and geometric clarity of the grid structure are reminiscent of minimalist objects or Concrete art. Details deriving from the objects’ functionality like the black plastic caps or the silver screws stand out against the white and tie the seemingly rigorous abstraction to our “colourful world of consumer goods”. Hereby, the artist is creating a contrast to the quiet plainness of a lacquered metal plate mounted behind the grid.

Slotawa pursues this fundamental interest in taking up what is actually there, using — and indeed co-opting it —and dealing with processes such as change, condensation and rearrangement in the architecture of the gallery. For the presentation of the wall objects he substantially changed the exhibition space by installing three new walls.

Similar to his intervention at Arp Museum Rolandseck as well as his last exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake, the artist used wall elements as his sculptural material. The overall size of the three walls equals the volume of a freestanding wall, which was separating the gallery space during Slotawa’s 2009 exhibition and which has been dismantled in the meantime. The three new walls have been placed in the former position but shifted entirely from their original axis. They seem to traverse the space independently without relating to the existing architecture of the gallery. The walls, on which some of the objects are placed, create a completely new environment with niches and narrow aisles with vistas and thus special conditions for the perception of the works.

Florian Slotawa was born in Rosenheim in 1972 and lives and works in Berlin. His solo exhibitions include „Everyday Life" (mit Paola Pivi und Bojan Šarčević), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2014); „Andere Räume", Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck (2012); „Local Plants", Artpace, San Antonio (2012); P.S.1, MoMA, New York (2009); “Solothurn aussen“, Kunstverein Solothurn, (2008); “One After the Other“, Arthouse, Austin (2007); “Land gewinnen”, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2005); “Bonn ordnen”, Bonner Kunstverein (2004); and “Gesamtbesitz”, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2002). In 2006 he participated in the 4th Berlin Biennale. Sculptures from his new body of work are currently also on view at Kunstverein Braunschweig (12.09.-22.11.2015). In Berlin is currently participating in a group exhibition at Haus am Lützowplatz  (19.09.-08.11.2015).