Van der Grinten Galerie is pleased to announce our move into our new gallery space in Gertrudenstraße 29. This historic ensemble of buildings comprises three town houses whose distinct bel étage offers space of 110 sqm for the gallery and our artists, and inspires a fascinating dialogue between the past and the present. Now located on the first floor, our premises will integrate the gallery work, the mediation of young contemporary art and historical positions, the presentation of our book publications and editions as well as our events series into an even more personal atmosphere than what has long since become Van der Grinten Galerie’s trademark.

For the start of the season and the DC Open Weekend on September 2, we are opening our doors with the single exhibition unicycle in the universe… of Berlin artist Wolfgang Flad.

Flad, who was born in Reutlingen in 1974, studied Sculpture at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart from 2000 to 2004. Ever since, his work has reached a wide audience through numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad. One of his most impressive hanging sculptures to date is currently and up to December 2017 being displayed in TAMPA Museum of Art in Florida.

In the current exhibition he also presents an expansive, floating sculpture that creates the impression of a swirl of biomorphic shapes, frozen in a wild, dynamic movement. Flad is constantly confronting the issue of depicting dynamic movement in a static state, and making volume and density seem weightless. The organic shapes of his sculptures result from the timber constructions branching out rhythmically into the room like a three-dimensional drawing. He smoothens the sharp edges, and he moulds the intersections and surfaces with papier mâché that he produces from shredding art history documents. This way, Flad recycles thoughts and writings about art and incorporates them into his works.

The new relief works, that also form part of the exhibition, have their origin in a 14-part wall frieze that the artist created in connection with our last joint book production. Here, for the first time, he experimented with colour gradients on lacquered surfaces. The results are wall pieces that combine iridescent surfaces with his painterly gestures, milled into the wood. This creates a bafflingly three-dimensional effect, it provides them with depth and shows the artist’s systematic development of his relief works.