Tilmann Krumrey

ARTIST STATEMENT

I work in the quarry of human subsistence and have the heart of a poet.

Sculpture inevitably involves the third dimension. Built space (architecture/cavity) and built bodies (sculpture/body) are complementary forms. The dialog between space and body, between space and sculpture, usually unfolds unconsciously and spontaneously in the space within. This is why I have started to develop "stages" for my sculpture. In these "space installations", all the senses are addressed by deliberately shaping acoustics, light, temperature, smell, touch and physical sensation as a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). These spaces alter consciousness and build bridges between the inner world of dream and physical existence.

I work figuratively because the naked human body provides spontaneous access to the embodied content across all boundaries. Body language is understood intuitively and universally. In contrast to the exploration of mythological themes through the subject matter of my works, my artistic approach is formally very systematic and strictly structured: standing, lying, sitting, hanging, jumping, running, resting are fundamental human body states that I design and examine in their expressiveness. Turning, separating, merging, combining, sharpening, dissolving, cutting bodies are creative permutations that I apply to the individual postures. A two-dimensional morphological matrix can be developed from both categories (body state / creative permutation), the fields of which represent all the creative manifestations of these two categories and thus enable me to systematically grasp the artistic possibilities of my work.

I prefer to use traditional materials such as stone, wood, plaster, wax, bronze and metal in order to draw attention to the innovation in the statement and style rather than the material, as is so often the case in contemporary art. I usually create video artworks in my spaces and with the sculptures as protagonists. Through the (moving) camera, spatial contexts can be transferred into a two- dimensional medium and through the film, the static dramaturgy frozen in each figure can be transferred into the moving dramaturgy of a narrative. In my painting I realize sculptural ideas on the one hand and spaces beyond this physical reality on the other, by confronting abstraction and color as a quality of its own with figuration or by placing figures in inner spaces and landscapes seen only in dreams or visions.