Deutsch Bio Thomas Zipp Bio Andi Fischer

Press Release

Exhibition Thomas Zipp & Andi Fischer at nw9, Cologne

The Cologne based project space “nw9” is pleased to present the double exhibition Advanced Trip, Inc. with the Berlin based artists Thomas Zipp (*1966 in Heppenheim) and Andi Fischer (*1987 in Nuremberg). Both artists will show new works created especially for the show.

At the centre of Thomas Zipp's artistic practice is the human being in his references - connected with the question of what man/woman need physically and culturally in order to develop as much as possible their life. Art and science, which our age has long kept meticulously separate, are linked in Zipp's work from the very beginning. In doing so, however, he does not proceed systematically or analytically, but rather, in an imaginative, associative way, pursues something like a very own cultural science, ranging from medicine, physics, pharmacy, and psychology to music and art to spirituality and drugology, inspired by parallel currents and para-sciences. Zipp's motifs and figures appear repeatedly in different contexts, embedded in painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. A dark, enigmatic sound emanates from his entire work - reinforced by the faces of characters and puppets who, in his cosmos, stand for certain questions and ambiguities, for experiments, chances, and failures - and for the associated utopias that were conceived to improve our world, and yet failed again and again.

For the exhibition at nw9, Zipp has created a new version of his 2004 installation World Chancellor Office. The work then showed a map of the world, as usual with London at the centre, on which Zipp inscribed various events as visions for the next twenty years. In the new map, he has shifted the centre: The island nations of Samoa and Kiribati in the central Pacific now form the centre, while London and Europe are on the far left and America is on the right. Here, too, Zipp looks to the future - the new map refers to fictional events in the next 25 years. Where is the journey going? asks the artist, who also juxtaposes this installation with one of his sculptures in pill form: The pill as a trip, a journey inward, is a recurring metaphor in his work. Here, microcosm and macrocosm, introspection and world travel intertwine. The fact that the exhibition space used to be a travel agency closes the circle - and the title Advanced Trip, Inc. takes on an ambiguity that elevates Andi Fischer to another level.

Andi Fischer works on canvases, paper, and photographs with colourful scribbled paintings. At first glance, they look like casual sketches or naive children's drawings of animals, people, plants, or fantasy creatures, which could prematurely classify them as so-called Outsider Art. But on closer inspection it becomes clear that the figures and signs conflict with the world and with their own role in it. What seems so harmless has a sober undertone.

The works Fischer is showing at nw9 were created last summer. The artist toured the U.S. from coast to coast, taking pictures of desolate places in the Midwest of the country - patches of forest, deserts, roads, and buildings - whose abandonment is as palpable as the brutality with which land was once conquered and made usable here. Empty landscapes, some built up with anonymous utilitarian architecture, seem to Fischer like Mars, which is currently in the sights of the super-rich to pursue a similar imperialism there as immigrants from Europe once did in America. Fischer collages his photographs with drawings of trees, suns, or houses that convey a sense of loneliness and disorientation but also radiate something confused, angry, and desperate: Symbolic images directed against the subjugation of land and landscape as a constantly repeated power gesture of modern man.

It is this attitude that Zipp and Fischer share: They perceive the world as a place shaped by man, which he is gradually undermining - and yet which has not yet exhausted its nurturing and creative potential. Both artists open alternative thinking spaces that touch on this potential. The journey of the earth is not yet over. But how long man will continue to ride along as a passenger is entirely up to him.

Text: Gesine Borcherdt, art critic and curator

 
contact

nw9 is open Fridays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment.
For appointments, please contact info@nw9.space.

nw9
Kunstraum der Stiftung Kunstwissenschaft Köln
Neue Weyerstraße 9
50676 Köln