T H E B R E E D E R

GERT und UWE TOBIAS

ROSWITHA MEETS DIONYSOS

21 MAY – 02 JULY
PRIVATE VIEW SATURDAY 21 MAY 12 – 4 P.M.

The unexpected encounter between myth and daily life, cult and the world becomes an especially visible phenomenon in the land of mythological narratives and among the ancient ruins within the traffic-infested metropolis of Athens. "Roswitha meets Dionysos" is the title of this meeting. The Cologne-based artists Gert and Uwe Tobias used the image of longing and projection as the motif for the invitation to their exhibition in "The Breeder". By looking through the historically and geographically closed system and transposing its image language into a contemporary form, they create the space to experiment on questions of identity and transferral, personal myths and their demystification. The twins have been experimenting in this way since they began their artistic work, focussing on their origins in Transylvania. Their media of expression range from conceptual projects and installations to woodcuts, typewriter drawings, collages and sculptures. The wealth of experience they have gathered travels with them as spiritual and formal "hand-luggage", always seeking parallels and moments of transferral. They are apparent in the form of an exhibition that is a dramatisation of a local historical museum, or in their view of the past and present self-representation of their home region, the subject of so many myths and legends. So Gert and Uwe Tobias´ confrontation with Greece as a historical model of longing takes on aspects of the humorous play on the formation of identity and the deconstruction of a socially and culturally characterised group of people. A large woodcut for instance uses the ornaments of the geometric star and circle motif found on Corinthian bowls. It is also reminiscent of stylised forms of popular art. Other woodcuts, collages and small clay sculptures present the abstract and figurative formal world of the artists using strongly contrasting colours. The expressionistically dispersed clay pieces that were already presented in their last exhibition, and are a mixture between grotesque objects and utility receptacles, produce a wide range of associations. They include popular art, a contemporary form of classical vases and figures, as well as an image of memory in the shape of an artefact.

The image on the invitation, "Roswitha meets Dionysos", is paradigmatic for the exhibition: A female figure uses her paintbrush to add to the bushy flora around her beneath the shade of an enormous Doric temple. Is she adding a little colour to the already existent tones of the southern landscape, or is she Pictura, the image and creator of it all? Unlike her allegorical predecessors, who were mostly interested in copying a natural motif from behind the easel, Nature itself seems to spring from her palette, producing a coloured picture of Greece. Dionysos, the god of everything orgiastic and cultic, only appears as the name-giver of the temple in the artists´ collage. He remains a phantom or seems to have hurried on to enjoy the revelry of the bacchants. It is not enough for Gert and Uwe Tobias to copy myths that have been handed down to us. Instead they let their view of traditional cultural models and their transformation from woodcuts to sculptural work create an original world of images.

Lilian Haberer

Installation view

Untitled, 2005, woodcut print, 200x165cm
Untitled, 2005, woodcut print, 186x186cm