Edmund Kieselbach

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edmund Kieselbach

Edmund Kieselbach (born November 15, 1937 in Briesen , Pomerania ; † July 7, 2006 in Bochum ) was a German painter, graphic artist, sound and installation artist. With his sound installations and objects, Kieselbach is one of the founders of the new sound art , which developed in the 1960s in connection with happenings and the neodadaist Fluxus .

life and work

Edmund Kieselbach grew up in the rural area of ​​Pomerania. After the family fled , they lived in Rendsburg , Schleswig-Holstein . At the age of 15 he left northern Germany and traveled to the Ruhr area , where the theologian Emil Krapp took him in and promoted him. Krapp, with whom he lived for six years, introduced him to Kandinsky and abstract art. Kieselbach later referred to Krapp as his "spiritual father". In a home for apprentices, he first completed a craft training course as a vehicle maker, from 1957 to 1962 he studied at the Werkkunstschule Wuppertal. Teachers were Krull (nude), Oberhoff (painting), Vostell (experimental typography), Meckenstock (art history).

As a student he resisted the guidelines of post-war “ informal painting ” and its teachers, who rejected any form of direct depiction of reality and whose avant-garde role he felt was outdated. Inspired by Pop Art, with his plastic pictures, which he developed shortly after his studies, he finally escaped the shackles of the " Informel " he felt . Kieselbach thus moved in a circle of new, avant-garde artists who further developed abstract expressism (the Informel) and included everyday culture in their work.

On the one hand, he worked with abstract forms, but at the same time plaid figurative motifs and symbols of a modern industrial culture in his imagery. In some cases he even removed the bounding rectangular frame of the pictures and made them part of the picture with the outlines of human body parts (heads, hands). Whether this is inspiring, for example through the “ shaped canvases ” ( Frank Stella ), or from your own idea remains open.

The intense colors of the pictures and his difficult-to-control new painting material, "liquid plastic", stand in clear contrast to the positions of the young Düsseldorf avant-garde (group ZERO - Piene , Mack , Uecker ), in whose works the monochrome, light, shadow and exercise play a big role. His plastic pictures often look like cast prints of the time. They show an ornament-like mixture of natural forms and human figures in the gears of a machine-like, loud scenario that, despite all its positive charisma, can definitely be understood as a criticism of an increasingly foreign determination of humans through machines and consumption. "In the 1960s the Rhine and Ruhr are ZERO-Land" and so the plastic pictures are particularly popular in nearby countries. In 1967 and 1968 Kieselbach had six solo exhibitions, all of which were sold in Brussels in the first one.

The story of fire - mechanical ballet 1968 in Kiel

As part of his painting exhibitions, he came into contact with Hans Schalla , director of the Schauspielhaus Bochum , who invited him to develop the set for “Caesar and Cleopatra”. In 1963 he met the composer Dieter Schönbach , who was then music director of the Bochum theater. On the one hand, Schönbach and Kieselbach wanted to break through artistic boundaries; on the other hand, they wanted to create a cross-genre total work of art in music. Initially, Kieselbach took on the part of the artistic and graphic implementation of the sound figures developed by the composer for the concert " Chant Liturgique " (Schönbach / Kieselbach). In 1965 Kieselbach switched from drawing scores to installations and objects. He developed the first large mechanical figures for the opera “The Story of a Fire” (premiered in 1968 in Kiel). Sound objects that could be seen and heard in other public performances.

In 1972 Kieselbach expanded the space for his sound works. The incompatibility of kinetic art with a stage that was fixed and limited to the “peep box” led to the breakout from this environment. Kieselbach was looking for new action spaces for his sound installations and objects in factory halls and elsewhere. As part of the art exhibition "Szene-Rhein-Ruhr 72" in Essen, he developed a sound street from large, redesigned cable drums, which involved the visitors and made them actors in the resulting sound collages.

These works are also the beginning of various projects that had the goal of developing sound installations and objects “together with strangers” through actions at the workplace. Kieselbach never wanted to concentrate solely on a viewer standing outside the work. His works always include people and the lively figurative in the creative process when it comes to creating images and sound images. As Kieselbach was ready to include the thoughts and actions of “strangers” in the process of his artistic creation, the resulting works also became the occasion and expression of social creativity and development. In keeping with Joseph Beuys' “Social Sculpture” (1973) and his postulate, “Everyone is an artist” (thoughts that are currently reflected in musical projects such as the YouTube symphony orchestra). In 1976 Edmund Kieselbach founded the group MULTI - art to look at, listen to, touch - together with Rolf Glasmeier and Klaus Geldmacher . MULTI used materials from industrial production, detached these serial objects from their everyday environment and use and assembled them into multimedia art objects.

Color-light piano for faithful reproduction of the multimedia concert Prometheus by Alexander Scriabin

Despite all the new places for his objects, Kieselbach did not leave the "peep box" theater stage entirely, rather he tried to break through the limits of the stage together with other artists. For almost two decades Kieselbach worked on two multimedia projects, the opera "Apocalyptica" (1971–1989), which in turn was created in the team and at Milko Kelemen for the music, Fernando Arrabal for the text and Kieselbach for the multimedia objects as well as were responsible for the multimedia score, and with the performance and visual color implementation of the multimedia concert Prometheus in a faithful reproduction of the composition by Alexander Scriabin with the color piano developed by Kieselbach (1981). The multimedia opera “Apocalyptica”, for which the preparatory work began in 1971, was completed both in terms of the overall conception and content, but it was not performed in Graz until 1979, as a ballet in Dresden in 1983 and as a production for pantomimes under the direction of Milan Sládek in 1989 Michaeliskirche in Cologne was premiered on the previous multimedia productions. With the multimedia opera "Hysteria - Paradies schwarz", which premiered in 1971, she connected her goal after she had turned away from the peep box.

With his color piano on a base of rods made of neon tubes, Kieselbach took up one of the earliest examples of color-light-sound works ( color light music ) and brought it back to the consciousness of art and science. From 1976 on, Kieselbach developed various large sound objects in which he combined a clear spatial-geometric form with sequences of movements that generate the sound. They are driven by human power, motors or, in nature, by the wind (sound stalks / sound trees). In 1983 he met the composer Klaus Hinrich Stahmer , who, as director of the “Days of New Music 1985”, was looking for unusual sounds for his project in Würzburg. Both had crossed the boundaries between musical and visual arts in their works and felt a great artistic agreement in their thinking and work. They were also united in their rejection of any form of fashionable actionism in art. This resulted in an intellectual and research exchange lasting over two decades, in the context of which Kieselbach's work took a place in central positions in Stahmer's music projects. Among other things, the sound worlds of Kieselbach's objects formed the tonal basis for compositions by Stahmer, which in turn were electronically processed and presented to the public via tape (Herr der Winde 1997).

In 1987 Kieselbach entered into a studio partnership of several years with the installation artist Klaus Geldmacher, with whom he had already worked in the MULTI group. The installations resulting from this community were conceived as an experience space of light, movement, sculpture, sound and color and set in motion as part of musical performances.

Gradually, Kieselbach's work was reduced. The transparent and at the same time very simple visual design of his objects enables the viewer / listener to concentrate on hearing. The pure listening experience becomes the goal of Kieselbach's work, no longer the object that can be perceived by the eye and ear. At the beginning of the nineties, in search of the original sound experience, the first "listening objects" inspired by Concrete Art were created.

Kieselbach developed one last major sound project in 2000 for the exhibition hall of the Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg, which was carried out in Lüdenscheid in 2002 and in 2006 as part of the exhibition at the Museum Bochum "... and it moves - from Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely to contemporary mobile art" was reinstalled and staged. He then founded the private art school "Innenbild - Atelier der Freie Künste" together with his wife Renata Kieselbach , whose director and teacher he remained until his death in 2006. As an artist, he concentrated more and more on painting. From 2000 to 2006 he created large-format acrylic paintings with a strong focus on expressive gestures and movement.

In his artistic endeavors, Kieselbach was concerned with holism combined with multimedia diversity. As a student of the young Wolf Vostell , he was inspired and shaped by the happenings that developed in the sixties and the Fluxus movement. Like many avant-gardists of his time, he wanted to break with existing, traditional standards of evaluation and ideas about what art is. It was about creating a new unity between art and society.

Edmund Kieselbach was a member of the German Association of Artists .

Awards

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 1967/69/70 Brussels - Galerie L'angle aigu
  • 1975 Frankfurt a. M. - Braun & Schlockermann
  • 1976 Bochum - Museum Bochum art collection
  • 1982 Tokyo - Asahi Shimbun (traveling exhibition through Japan)
  • 1988 Stuttgart - German Association of Artists / Württemberg Art Association
  • 1996 Lüdenscheid - Museums of the City of Lüdenscheid
  • 2000 Regensburg - Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie
  • 2001 Kaliningrad Museum

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

  • 1964 Lausanne - Pauli Gallery
  • 1967 Lille - Haute / Ostend Gallery - La chèvre Folle Gallery
  • 1970 Warsaw - National Gallery / Krakow - Museum
  • 1971 Basel / art fair (about "Objekt Art" Dr. Gunter Zenz)
  • 1973 London - Rotunda Gallery
  • 1975 Osijek - Exhibition - Juri Valoch
  • 1985 Würzburg - Music Days / Stuttgart - State Gallery
  • 1987 Linz - Ars Electronica
  • 1990 Lodz - Historical Museum
  • 1992 Paris - Albert Bernamou Gallery / Aachen - Ludwig Forum for International Art
  • 2004 Brno - House of Art
  • 2005 Hürth - Im Werk P2 (Art Prize Art Association Hürth)
  • 2013 Essen - Galerie Frank Schlag (best of ruhr area)

Multimedia projects (selection)

  • 1965 Concert "Chant Liturgie" (with Dieter Schönbach)
  • 1965 multimedia opera "History after the Fire" (with Dieter Schönbach / Otto Piene)
  • 1970 multimedia piece "Der Sturm" (with Dieter Schönbach)
  • 1971 Multimedia game "Hymnus" (with Dieter Schönbach)
  • 1972 Multimedia event Klangstrasse - Balet-Canzona
  • 1974 Multimedia opera "Opera Bestial" - (with Fernando Arrabal / Milko Kelemen)
  • 1979 multimedia opera "Apokalyptica" - (with Milko Kelemen / Fernando Arrabal)
  • 1981 Light piano for "Prometheus" by Alexander Scriabin (with Othmar Mága)
  • 1987 Performance "Tonfall" (with Klaus Geldmacher)
  • 1996 Multimedia scenario "Dialogue with the Wind" (with Klaus Stahmer, Milan Sládek, Carin Levine)
  • 2001 Concert & sound installation "The Seasons for Oboe and Listening Reeds" - (with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer / Ricardo Rodrigues)

Discography

  • 1972 Multimedia game: "Morning after the fire - Hymn 2" Multimedia Group - Blumenfeld-Kieselbach-Schönbach Catalog accompanying record with excerpts from the piece
  • 1985 sound sculptures (LP) conception KH Stahmer, production University of Music, Würzburg / Wergo Schallplatten GmbH, Mainz - SM 1049/50 - spectrum
  • 2000 Horchen (audio CD) - Edmund Kieselbach, Klaus Hinrich Stahmer / AMA-Musikverlag www.ama-verlag.de, producer Dave Maler EAN 4 018262 266269 / Art.No. 626624
  • 2009 Silence Is the Only Music (CD) Composer: Klaus Hinrich Stahmer Piece No. 6 - "To lose is to have" for accordion, Chinese bronze bells and ears (1999) interpreters - Andrea Carola Kiefer, Edmund Kieselbach / WERGO - a division of SCHOTT, Mainz artist.cd

literature

Web links

Individual references and sources

  1. ^ Horchen - Edmund Kieselbach sound installation / p. 36, catalog Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, March 2000
  2. ^ Horchen - Edmund Kieselbach sound installation / p. 59, catalog Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, March 2000
  3. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Kieselbach, Edmund ( Memento from February 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Kieselbach, Edmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist, sound and installation artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Briesen , Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 2006
Place of death Bochum , North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany