BALDUR BURWITZ
04.02.11 - 23.03.11

Opening: Friday, February 4 | 19 pm
with an introduction by Rik Reinking.

There is a booklet published - accompanying the exhibition.
Euro 5,- | » Order

Baldur Burwitz sees himself with his artistic work neither in the context of minimal art nor in the concept art of the 60’s. Nevertheless he responds to the question about the necessity of a post or after minimal art movement in a charming way, with the exhibition entitled SAFE for which he especially developed a work group for the Borchardt gallery.

He thereby simultaneously becomes a sculptor, a painter, an illustrator, and lastly a graphic artist and he avails himself of all classical conception of what expression and technique can be in contemporary art. Consequently he remains what he is – an artist of ideas. When he captures Duchamp’s paradigm of the definition of a banal, non-artificial subject, he turns it again into an artwork and contributes it into the debate. What the viewer gets to see are commercial safe-deposit boxes. These are hanging on the wall, are standing on pedestals or are resting directly on the floor of the gallery.

With all sobriety and reduction of the same objects, he intends to partially remove the anchored relation of subject and object in the western civilization.

The viewer reaches his limits, if he only follows his habits and cultural knowledge when he concedes the availability and understandability of the work. The work group is not self-referential, but it owns an interior life, which interpretational approaches are beyond a pure physical appearance of the objects and are able to initiate a thought process through its title. The unverifiable knowledge of this interior life is conflicting the exterior appearance of the work and puts the viewer into the situation where he has to reflect his own attitude towards the work. He is forced or at least tempted to let his own fantasy run free. Consequently it creates a kind of self-portrait in the recipient’s mind’s eye.

Since the artist only reveals the basic information, the viewer is asked to let his own creativity run free. Everything that evolves from the imagination of the viewer tells him more about himself than about the intention of the artist. This is exactly what Burwitz wants to achieve with his work.

Already in 1920 the surrealist, painter, photographer and object artist Man Ray veiled and tied a sewing machine and called the work of art “The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse”. The veiled object did not remain a solitary case in the work of Man Ray. He deals repeatedly with the topic of packing, veiling and hiding.

Burwitz’s main concern is not the bare veiling of most different objects. Therefore it is not about “revelation by hiding”, as David Bourdon describes precisely the work of Christo but through detours he rather draws the portrait of the viewer, which emerges out of his self collected individual experiences.

Rik Reinking, 2011