GALERIE DROSTE
KATERNBERGER STRAßE 100
42115 WUPPERTAL
The preoccupation with constructed spatiality structured, opened and limited by architectonic elements – this defines the essential link between the works of Boris Tellegen, Heiko Zahlmann and Raphael Brunk. Already during their activity within the graffiti scene Tellegen and Zahlmann dealt with built-up environments and contributed to a change in its perception by artistic intervention. In doing so, they transformed the urban scenery in such a manner as to provide the two-dimensional sculptures of letters with the illusion of spatial prominence before they started to actually work sculptural. Initially, Brunk was on the scent of architectural details within the cityscape and photographically caught this shaped materiality of the space. Admittedly, he did not intervene in a way as to change the environment, but made it able to be experienced in a new way through selected perspectives.
These initial insights with and within space resulted in different ways of involvement still revolving around the same subject until today. On the one hand with the layering of material in his collages, on the other hand via his cubically constructed sculptures, Tellegen approached a conception of space, which in a process of deconstruction and partial destruction yields new shapes reflecting the tension between chaos and order. Zahlmann appropriates the natural phenomenon of shadow and bans the colour perception in favour of an almost visually prehensile haptic, which springs from alphabetical characters but sacrifices any semantic value to the pure shape. Tellegen as well as Zahlmann shape the space with physical means, construct it and build up new relations within it.
Brunk on the other hand operates within an immaterial sphere spatially perceptible due to the recognition of objects from our surrounding world. We can even move about freely in there. From a viewpoint behind the actual scenery he brings off prospects of digital worlds revealing its own construction. Hovering incoherently in the space set, pieces draw the outlines of a supposed reality, which looked upon solely from the other side seems to be an intact world.
