Hans Paul Isenrath

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Paul Isenrath (* 8. April 1936 in Mönchengladbach ) is a German sculptor and emeritus professors . He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Le Nayrac, Aveyron department , France.

Life

Paul Isenrath was born in Mönchengladbach in 1936. In 1953 he left after GCSEs the school to attend art school Krefeld a graphic design degree take. After six semesters he moved to Düsseldorf, where he met Otto Piene and Heinz Mack and witnessed the beginnings of ZERO and Fluxus . Destitute, he ventured to Paris and offered himself to Hans Arp , Alberto Giacometti and Hans Hartung as an assistant. Finally he found a place for his own work in the studio of the sculptor François Stahly . During this time, the first small sculptures made of slag and glass were created. He also experimented with plaster of paris.

In 1959 he spoke to the Spanish sculptor Berto Lardera , who was visiting professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg in those years . In the absence of any works to be presented, he hastily presented objects that had been soldered together in his room , whereupon he was accepted into the study program and stayed at the academy for two semesters . During his artistic maturity, he made the most lasting experiences from 1960 to 1962 as Norbert Kricke's assistant in Düsseldorf. Here, in the last station of his training, he also received his first commissioned work , a copper door for the Christ Church under construction (completed in 1964) in Meerbusch-Büderich near Düsseldorf. In 1967 he spent a scholarship year at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. During this time, he mainly created drawings, which he used to express his style.

From 1971 to 2001 he was professor and from 1988 to 1992 rector of the Art Academy in Münster .

In September 2017 he was among the signatories of an open letter to the Elders of the German Bundestag , where the request is submitted that for the first time in the Bundestag drawn AFD not chair the committee for culture and media should receive.

plant

The near, which our world is made of, a stone, the earth of the path, a trickle of water or a hedge, fascinates him as much as the vastness, namely the night sky and what it suggests. So be looking into the cloudy night sky, the trigger for the Gros been his artistic work. Area and space could no longer be distinguished. Every conscious observation of nature, "the presence of the supposedly unspectacular [became] the model of his aesthetics ", as it is called in the general artist lexicon.

His main work is divided into drawings and sculptures. Photographs and video works only complement it. Jürgen Wißmann described Isenrath's art in an essay as "surface sculpture". Isenrath is not a sculptor according to the common understanding, but neither is a painter in the strict sense. Rather, he connects both directions in that his objects are flat except for a few traces of processing. This persistence in two-dimensionality inevitably requires a higher degree of abstraction than with spatial sculptures . His approach is best comparable to that of Norbert Kricke, and Dan Flavin could also be cited for a broader comparative term .

His drawings are similar to the sculptures, because they do not depict objects, but surface structures that are therefore largely flat. The dents or bends in the sculptures correspond to the lines or balls of lines that represent, for example, rippling water or a light source reflecting on the water. Isenrath mostly draws in series. The artist's lexicon writes: “The moment of repetition, chiaroscuro values ​​and the spontaneous writing down of impressions are predominant here. The moment as reality, Isenrath said in an interview, is important to him, he wants to express himself as directly as possible, and above all to be unpretentious . "

In terms of sculpture, he works with industrially prefabricated sheet metal made of various metals such as copper or iron , but from which he does not form figures or compact structures. They just remain surfaces, sometimes more, sometimes less processed (for example with hammer blows or paint spraying), the larger ones leaning against an angle, set up vertically with plinths or lying flat on the floor, the smaller ones sometimes mounted on stone. Serial production is also used here. In his essay, Wißmanns said: “Isenrath's sculptures are and do not want to be works that strive for a fully formed character. Although their design does not need to be supplemented, but rather is complete, they do not offer a result - otherwise they would be a fully formed volume that can be described as a self-identical factuality. "

In the mid-1960s he laid metal basins and water channels in green spaces, for example with water, an element called a measure . He took part in documenta 6 with such a production . Another project, in which its recurring central element water played a decisive role, was carried out in 1992: He set up a water-filled glass in Madrid and one in the antipodean New Zealand town so that they stood almost upside down. Video cameras broadcast both scenes and documented the visibility and invisibility of the earth's rotation and gravity . As looking beyond our planet into the universe , the series can be understood as something from the years 1980 to 1983. A few bent metal rods, "hooks", as Wissmann put it, lie far apart on the floor and appear like star constellations in the vastness of the room .

In the catalogs , “self- statements” that are formulated like “ sayings ” accompany the objects. One of them reads from 1977: “When I talk about a thing, I talk about a thing in an indefinite period of time.” Another from the 1980s: “The solid and impenetrable below and next to me / the free, that enables expansion above and next to me me."

Self-statement about his artistic work

"Abstract? Giacometti is right when he says that he cannot imagine art without a subject . But where is it written that the subject has to be arms, legs or a flower pot? It could also be the silent expanse of a cloudy night sky, so even and unstructured that I can't even find places in it. [...] "

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 2003: New York Jamaica Center, Global Priority
  • 2002: Salamanca Casa de las Conchas
  • 2001: Madrid Instituto Allemán
  • 2000: Korea Moran Open Air Museum, Beyond the Circle
  • 1999: Cologne HAUSDERKUNST
  • 1997: Lippstadt Art Association, Ahlen Art Association, Lünen Municipal Gallery, Cologne Room for Art
  • 1994: Kunsthalle Kiel , art on a world scale
  • 1994: Museum Goch , Between Tin and Water
  • 1993: Münster, LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History , Antipodal Water Level (Uta M. Reindl: Paul Isenrath, Kunstforum International , Volume 123, 1993, p. 342)
  • 1992: input - output. Direct plastic , vehicle scales Cologne
  • 1990: Galerie im Kornhaus, Ulm
  • 1985: Municipal Gallery Lüdenscheid
  • 1974: Water an element as measure , Rheinpark Emmerich
  • 1972: Rheinhausen Municipal Collections
  • 1964: Kunstverein Freiburg
  • 1964: Galerie Thomas Munich

Group exhibitions (selection)

Awards

Literature / exhibition catalogs

  1. Paul Isenrath…: (catalog for the project and exhibition sculpture project Gotha 1992–2002; June 29 - October 27, 2002, Schlossmuseum Schloss Friedenstein ).
  2. Sculpture project Gotha 1992–2002. The realized projects. An interim report. Schlossmuseum Schloss Friedenstein Gotha, October 2002. ISBN 3-936825-11-4 .
  3. Andrea Fink (ed.): Paul Isenrath: Kunstverein Lippstadt - The passive element. KunstVerein Ahlen - A kind of despotic will. Municipal gallery Lünen - statement. 1997.
  4. Exhibition Paul Isenrath - Between sheet metal and water. Museum Goch, 1995.
  5. Draftsman - Part: 3. From the line to the room: Paul Isenrath (Wasser 94 drawings)… (= The Emschertal Museum ; Volume 35.) Municipal Gallery in the Strünkede Castle Park , Herne, 1992. (Responsible for the content: Alexander von Knorre. Authors: Michael Henning…) ISBN 3-922987-30-3 .
  6. Hesse: Young Artists , 1987, p. 141.
  7. Uwe Obier: Ulrich Erben : Painting. Paul Isenrath: sculpture, drawing. Municipal Gallery Lüdenscheid , 1985.
  8. Gerald Just (Ed.): Paul Isenrath. Forces - Shaped Places 1979. Something 1980–83. Selected sculptures and texts. Hanover, 1983 (?).
  9. Paul Isenrath. Sculptures, texts 1977 . Municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus , Munich, 1978.
  10. 3 Working with water. Paul Isenrath. 1978 (?).
  11. documenta 6, Kassel 1977. Volume 1, p. 196.
  12. Gerald Just (Ed.): Paul Isenrath. Water. 94 drawings. Düsseldorf, 1977.
  13. Paul Isenrath. 9 drawings, 4 sculptures on a steel plate. Art Association Gelsenkirchen , 1976.
  14. Paul Isenrath. Water. Drawings. Märkisches Museum of the City of Witten , 1975.

Web links

  1. Directory of artists, cultural office Düsseldorf

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h S [tephanie] Jaeckel: Isenrath . In: Andreas Beyer , Bénédicte Savoy , Wolf Tegethoff (Hrsg.): General artist lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples . tape 76 Hunzinger - Iza. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-023181-6 , pp. 426 f .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Jürgen Wißmann: Paul Isenrath . In: Uwe Obier (Ed.): Ulrich Erben: Painting. Paul Isenrath: sculpture, drawing . Municipal gallery Lüdenscheid. March 15 - April 21, 1985. Lüdenscheid 1985, p. 39-45 .
  3. ↑ The undersigned: Freedom and Diversity in Art and Culture. Open letter. In: Kulturausschuss-schuetzen.de. September 26, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2018 .
  4. ^ Paul Isenrath: Paul Isenrath. Sculptures, texts 1977 . 8.9. – 1.10.1978. Municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus Munich. Art forum underpass Maximilianstrasse / Altstadtring. Munich 1978, p. 12 (page counted as unpaginated).
  5. ^ Paul Isenrath: Forces - formed places 1979. Something 1980-83. Selected sculptures and texts . Ed .: Gerald Just. Hannover 1983, p. 67 (page counted as unpaginated).
  6. ↑ Digital Art and Culture Archive Paul Isenrath
personal data
SURNAME Isenrath, Hans Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Isenrath, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchengladbach