12 August 2019
Thomas Florschuetz – Zwischenzeit
Exhibition opening on 24 August 2019 in Rheinsberg
Every year, the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin presents the work of one of its members at the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum at Rheinsberg Palace. This year's exhibition is dedicated to Thomas Florschuetz and includes a selection of works from the series Ohne Titel (Palast), Enclosure (Neues Museum), Glas/Wasser and other large and small-scale photographs. The opening will take place on Saturday, 24 August 2019, at 11 am. The exhibition can be seen up until 3 November.
In his work, Berlin-based photographer Thomas Florschuetz engages with the fragmentary image that oscillates between abstraction and concretion. He has been creating unique photographic tableaux since the mid-1980s, beginning with images of parts of the body. Numerous groups of works on various subjects, including architecture, technology, botany and everyday objects, have followed to the present day. These not only differ fundamentally in their material and surface texture, but also in how they handle colour, light and shadow. Overlays of different surfaces such as fabric, glass, wood and stone transport the two-dimensional medium of photography to new spatial constellations.
The Zwischenzeit exhibition shows a selection of large formats that were created before the Palast der Republik was demolished and the Neues Museum was rebuilt in Berlin. The formal language of the architecture differs significantly between these two building complexes; their representational rhetoric relating to the (cultural) political, historical and social space, on the other hand, differs only slightly. The connection between interior and exterior spaces is achieved in these 'Zwischenzeiten' (interims) not only in the contemporary gallery of the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum but also in Rheinsberg Palace, which was essentially given its current form with its baroque park in the 18th century under Frederick the Great and his brother Heinrich. Florschuetz intervenes with botanical motifs in historical spaces such as the writing chamber. For the photographer, these analytical, structuring and constructive processes are not about the physical in the image but rather the viewer's perception of the body shown.
The exhibition series in Rheinsberg began with Jim Dine in 2000 and has been continued by Werner Stötzer, Wieland Förster, Rolf Szymanski, Alfonso Hüppi, Karin Sander, Dorothee von Windheim, Hanns Schimansky and, most recently, Dieter Appelt, among others.
Thomas Florschuetz was born in 1957 in Zwickau and moved to (West) Berlin in 1988. Numerous scholarships allowed the autodidact to spend longer periods of time in New York and at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. He received the Dorothea von Stetten Art Award in 2002 and the German Critics' Prize for Visual Arts in 2004. He has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin since 2007.
Exhibition information
Thomas Florschuetz – Zwischenzeit
Exhibition 24 August – 3 November 2019
Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum Rheinsberg Palace
16831 Rheinsberg, Tel. +49 (0)33931 39007, www.tucholsky-museum.de
Tue-Sun, 10 am – 5:30 pm, admission € 4/3
Opening: Saturday, 24 August 2019, 11 am
Opening address by Peter Böthig, Director of the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturemuseum at Rheinsberg Palace, and Anke Hervol, Secretary of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste, introduction by Eugen Blume
Reading and discussion with the artist: Saturday, 2 November 2019, 5 pm
With Durs Grünbein and Thomas Florschuetz, moderated by Peter Böthig
The exhibition has been realised as a co-operation between the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, the Kurt Tucholsky Literaturmuseum in Rheinsberg Palace and the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.