Günter Weseler

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Günter Weseler in the studio. In the middle the breath object "Bread" (2018)

Günter Weseler (* 1930 in Allenstein ) is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf. He became known for his "breath objects", which still make up the main part of his work today. With these "New Species", as he calls his objects, Weseler is one of the most important German avant-garde artists of the 1960s and 1970s.

biography

Youth and education

Günter Weseler spent his childhood in Allenstein in East Prussia. When, at the age of 15, in the last days of World War II, he was supposed to be called in to build anti-tank traps against the Russian army, his parents fled with him to Parchim in Neubrandenburg, from where they relocated to Niebüll in North Frisia. There he came into substantial contact with sheepskins, one of the main materials used to cover his later "New Species".

Together with his mother, a pianist and painter well known in the region, he painted representational landscapes “in competition”. He gained his first autodidactic experience by visiting a studio in Niebüll. Before he turned entirely to art, however, he completed an apprenticeship as a sound engineer and completed his degree in engineering. Then he studied architecture at the Technical University of Braunschweig (1953–1958). In addition, he devoted himself more and more to painting and thereby appropriated the art movements of the past decades.

However, his initially accepted job with the well-known Düsseldorf architect Paul Schneider-Esleben did not fulfill him.

Artistic creation

Weseler kept coming back to painting, especially at the beginning of his artistic career. At times he turned to the fantastic, he painted cubist houses, approached organic associations with spatula work in abstract pictures. Around 1958 he created serial art, “whereby Weseler disrupts, blurs, and rhythmizes the strict order in a dynamic brush curiosity. The static joins the kinetic ”. He picked up the impulses of the young musician Dieter Schönbach and began "to compose optically". Günter Weseler tried to follow the big tachists and informals like KRH Sonderborg or KO Götz - until he discovered breathing for himself.

Entrance to Weseler's old studio in Düsseldorf-Lörick (2018)
Atelier-Haus Schule, Düsseldorf-Lörick (2018)

In 1964 Günter Weseler began to deal with the phenomenon of breathing. "When the breath turns from bottom to top and then again when it turns from top to bottom - recognize through these two phrases!" Quoted Günter Weseler from a 3000 year old sutra . In that year he composed works with the composer Dieter Schönbach under the title "Atemmusik", in which they turned breathing into music. Either the rhythmic element of breathing, the constant up and down, was decisive for the musical sequence, or different timbres of breathing, such as breaths, currents, whistles, of wind instruments or an organ were modeled.

Inspired by this, in 1966 he switched to “visual shaping of the breathing rhythm” with about two meters tall, breathing balloons inflated by compressed air, from which the air escaped, and finally to mechanically controlled field objects. For the characteristic movement effects of most of his work, he certainly benefited from his previous training as a radio mechanic. The mechanical inner workings are driven by motor-driven control discs and levers, possibly accompanied by noise effects. Initially, a VW windscreen wiper motor served as the drive. Finally, he uses a small, commercially available electric motor which, by means of a rotating rod and an eccentric disc that is individually manufactured by him, transfers its irregular movement to the skin in a regularly repeating manner.

He places his faceless, breathing fur creatures in the most varied of life situations. Depending on the location, place and situation they can completely change their character. They are often found on walls and corners of the room. The breathing movements are greatly slowed down, so that the viewer often first has to make sure that there is an apparently living being. Weseler describes how he only noticed the influence of the surroundings on the perception of the viewer himself after he placed one of his actually cuddly-looking objects next to a child's doll: “Actually, the cot grating was only intended as protection so that no one could breathe on the lying down Essence, but I discovered that the object suddenly took on a completely different character: something very unreasonably threatening, violent came from him ... "Weseler places some of his" New Species "in the corner of a room, or he leaves a whole herd as "Overgrowths" come together on the wall and ceiling. They often have a meditative effect on the viewer. - It seems that for a long time he has alienated every thing that came into his hands in his own way. From a jewelry box, a washed-up iron barrel, from a spout (1969), in potatoes and bread, on and under towels, in corners, on edges and angles, it "breathed, jerked, welled and twitched".

Weseler was friends with the Eat Art artist Daniel Spoerri . Spoerri, who offered exotic dishes such as lion meat in his Düsseldorf eatery, Eat Art Gallery , also provided his source of supply for the lion skins , from which he created the installation “Phoenix”, which is exhibited in the Alte Oper Frankfurt, among other places .

Another of his breathing creatures crawls into an old bellows camera (Kaninfell, 1979), another is trapped in a rat trap (1973) or was pierced by arrows while still breathing (“Hommage à St. Sebastian”; Schaffell 1975). They seem to have a particular preference for textiles, such as old carpets (1975–1981).

Weseler began to assemble his objects into larger environments. In 1969 he set up an exhibition on the subject of “Rooms” in the Leverkusen Museum: “In the black-lined castle room, burned trees with black-gray rubber snakes lay on 'slaggy' soft foam, a crater structure made of elastic balloon rubber (condom material), spiky foam objects, all breathing, puffing up and sagging, accompanied by bubbling, creaking or rattling noises. ”He created breathing walls of over ten meters in length, which were shown both in private settings and as sets for operas. He also created the “Loch Ness Monster” (1974) caught in a cage from the foam material he specially formed for the breathing walls, restructured in the surface with the help of a converted loom.

Some of his work has a particularly provocative character. From 1968 he pierced mannequins and let polyurethane foam gush out of the injuries . In 1969 he had a parasite from a rabbit fall attached to the neck of a living woman. A doll covered with fur took on crazy features by a machine in the head.

For the work Sisyphos (Sisyphos II, 1980), a pyramid-shaped block of wood with a mighty ship chain, Weseler described the process of raising and lowering the rattling chain. A strongly delayed sequence of movements, as it applies similarly to his breathing objects, here especially an interaction with something that is perhaps perceived as tormenting? - or meditative? - slowed down time:

“The first phase of upward movement of 35 seconds is followed by 10 seconds of rest, then again 20 seconds of upward movement + 13 seconds of rest: the phases of movement become shorter + the pauses longer.

During the 4th upward movement, the chain pile suddenly falls back (crashes). - This is followed by a longer recovery phase of 5 minutes + the game starts again ... "

- Günter Weseler: Breathing Objects , 1986

The journalist Helga Meister wrote about Günter Weseler in 1974:

“At the Edinburgh Festival in 1970, as before at the Göttinger Kunstverein, he arranged a 'breathing banquett' in which the guests' food might have got stuck in their throats: the gifts were presented on a wooden table: fluffy Rex rabbits in clay bowls, bread made from them Animals breathed, a bizarre evening meal, accompanied by the noises of cicadas, which according to Weseler's words should intensify the 'erotic tension of the objects'. Repeating the PU foam of his mannequins, he also let ugly gray matter swell out of pigs' heads, lying on a couch draped with white linen.

In a certain way Weseler represents a 'German' variant of kinetics that is not satisfied with a machine hymn like Tinguely ; Nor does he love the confusing sophistication of the light kineticist Schoeffer . Its organic, animal kinetics is close to meditation; she knows the vulnerability of life, the transience of death, the presence of invisible beings, the uncanny, but also the joke, the spooky, the grotesque. It is an artificially created human comedy, with all the madness of today's 'humanity'. "

- Helga Meister: Günter Weseler , 1974

Günter Weseler installed his objects in many galleries and museums in Germany and abroad. Toronto, Edinburgh, Lucerne and Amsterdam showed the "organic kinetics", as Weseler also calls his works. In the 1980s he largely withdrew from public art life and has since been considered an “insider tip”.

He made a late comeback in 2011 at the age of 81. A gallery in Düsseldorf showed his work at the Art Cologne art fair . The eye-catcher was an ensemble of five cages hanging from the ceiling in 1969, each with a breathing sheepskin. On the occasion of a joint exhibition in Bamberg in 2016 it was said: "Günter Weseler from the Rhenish art scene is represented, among others, who was celebrated in the 1960s for his breathing rock objects and is currently experiencing a brilliant rediscovery." In September 2018, the now 88 -year-old artist at the Düsseldorf action of the public studios "Art Points" in his workshop in the Künstlerhaus, a former school in Düsseldorf-Niederlörick, where the sculptors Wilfrid Polke and Anatol Herzfeld were also active .

Awards

  • 2008 Art Prize of Artists , from the association for the organization of art exhibitions in the Museum Kunstpalast

Publications (selection)

  • 1986 Breathing Objects (illustrated book). Günter Weseler, Draier Verlag, Haun and Hitzelberger, ISBN 3-923530-12-9
  • 2010 Günter Weseler - Breathing Beings from Ralph Goetz and Werner Rauen, Institute for Artistic and Photographic Documentation (DVD)
  • 2015 Günter Weseler . Mariapia Pedrazzini, Zeno Piersch, Galleria Allegra Ravizza, Diehl, Berlin

Solo exhibitions and environments (selection)

  • 1960 Dortmund, Ungermann Gallery
  • 1966 Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle (evening exhibition)
  • 1967 Hanover, Munich Art Association ; Galerie Thomas, Essen, House Ruhnau
  • 1968 Cologne, art intermedia gallery; Düsseldorf, Gunar Gallery
  • 1969 Leverkusen, Schloss Morsbroich (Environment “Rooms”); Lucerne, Art Museum "Düsseldorfer Szene" (Environment); Cologne, Art Market, Galerie Thomas (Environment)
  • 1970 Edinburgh Art College “Strategy get arts” (Environment), Ibiza; among others
  • 1971 Düsseldorf, Eat art gallery (Daniel Spoerri)
  • 1972 Essen "Scene Rhein-Ruhr" (Environment); Helsinki, Museum Ateneum “Düsseldorf Art Scene ”; among others
  • 1973 Turku "Art Scene Düsseldorf"
  • 1974 Montreal, Musee d'Art Contemporain (Environment); Wiesbaden, Municipal Museum; among others
  • 1975 Toronto, The Electric Gallery; Copenhagen, Nye balla Center (Environment); among others
  • 1977 Rottweil, Forum Kunst Rottweil; among others
  • 1978 Amsterdam, Galerie Brinkmann; Toronto, The Electric Gallery; Berlin, National Gallery (Löwenenvironment)
  • 1979 Vienna, Galerie Lang; Toronto York University Gallery (Environment)
  • 1981 Alte Oper “Phönix” (Environment); among others
  • 1986 Siegen, art association
  • 1992 Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle “Mit Haut und Haaren” (Environment); Aachen, German Association of Artists (Environment)
  • 1993 Düsseldorf "Art Multiple" (Environment)
  • 1999 Dresden, German Hygiene Museum (Environment); among others
  • 2001 Aachen, Kornelimünster , former imperial abbey
  • 2013 Berlin, Diehl Cube "Sisyphos"
  • 2014 Lugano, Galleria Allegra Ravizza, “Breathing Objects, the new species”; among others

From 1967 to 1999 he also took part in group exhibitions almost every year.

Movies

  • 1969 TV film with Gerd Winkler NDR / WDR "Raum", with Gottfried Sello , Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen
  • 1970 BBC, TV film with Derrik Knight, Edinburgh and Düsseldorf
  • 1972 Finnish TV, Helsinki
  • 1974 WDR television film with W. Raeune; ZDF “Weseler breathing world”; Saarländischer Rundfunk, TV film with Marlene Franz "Günter Weseler"
  • 1987 Deutsche Welle, TV film with R.schicht

See also

Web links

Commons : Günter Weseler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Christiane Hoffmans: Fluff in the head . In: Welt am Sonntag , January 26, 2014. Last accessed September 23, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c d Without author's name: Laughter during the trembling phase . In Der Spiegel No. 27, 1974, pp. 99-100. Last accessed July 19, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Helga Meister: Günter Weseler . In: Günter Weseler , Galleria Allegra Ravizza, 2015. pp. 18–21. Secondary source: Exhibition catalog Günter Weseler , Museum Wiesbaden, December 1974 - January 1975
  4. ↑ Helga Meister: Art Prize: The civil shock of the 68er . In: Westdeutsche Zeitung , February 8, 2008. Last accessed October 31, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Günter Weseler in: Günter Weseler , Galleria Allegra Ravizza, 2015.
  6. ↑ Ralph Goertz and Werner Raeune: Günter Weseler - Atmende Wesen / Breathing Objects . Institute for Art Documentation, Video, November 2010. Last accessed September 24, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b c Günter Weseler: Breathing objects (illustrated book). Draier Verlag, Haun and Hitzelberger, Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken 1986, ISBN 3-923530-12-9
  8. ↑ Kunstraum-now! e. V .: Raven black . Exhibition period April 30 - June 12, 2016. Last accessed September 22, 2018.
  9. ↑ http://www.kunstpunkte.de: Günter Weseler . Last accessed September 23, 2018.
  10. ↑ Doorbell of the Atelier House , 2018.
  11. ↑ 150 artists at the "Grosse" In: NRZ, January 9, 2008. Last accessed September 24, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Weseler, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German object artist, sculptor and painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Allenstein