FS.ART Temporary Showroom - 19 Weymouth Street, W1G7BQ London

The morning never dies

A collaboration between 19 Weymouth and FS.ART
30.06.2009 - 31.07.2009 visit by appointment

Frank Ahlgrimm: blend

„blend“ is the programmatic title of one of Frank Ahlgrimms recent collages in which he samples together different picture contents and formal layers to create something new. He cuts out images of Sumo fighters or titles of fitness magazines to draw or paint them over afterwards. Since the drawings also follow the concept of sampling, parallels to his paintings are drawn in the same way. Ahlgrimm uses the whole range of drawing methods and sets them up against each other. As templates he uses photographs, images from print media and artworks by painters from the past and from today. Content wise the latest collages are related to a series of paintings named “Botox to go” in which Ahlgrimm reflects on typical body culture of today.

Klaus-Martin Treder: concept text
The drawings for HOUSEWARMING PARTY, which begun in 1998, are developing in an open way which could lead in all directions from the point of view of motifs, form and narrative. (...)
Format (DIN A4) and technique (ball-point pen) impart a sense of unity to the freedom of the drawing and standardize the stylistic diversity. The forms and figurations are concise, easily remembered and give the impression superficially of being produced quickly. It is only on looking more closely that the greater complexities of line, colour and surface composition become apparent and the simulation of dynamics becomes visible in the medium of the ball-point pen. The precise, monotonous method of proceeding which is dictated by the technique is incompatible with any notion of speed and introduces the aspect of time with its slowness. The fact that the creative process is slowed down in this way gives sufficient space to inner scenes of a secondary nature and playfulness of thought. They are indirectly contained in the time invested, even though at the end a concentrate of everything that has been gone through and thought out exists. Personal time then appears condensed into a manageable, parallel present.
The constant increase in the number of drawings always opens up new combinations; the partners for communication are allowed to change. The motifs, which range from the everyday to those taken from the comic strip, are not limited in any way (except by their own subjectivity), are generated from the personal view of the artist and are transferred into an ‘individual system of meaning’. A recognizable, attributable language hardens against all variation arising from the proliferating number of subjects, which are the product of the artist’s fantasy working within the same formal limitations.

[exh. cat. ‘Klaus-Martin Treder. Housewarming Party’, Hirschwirtscheuer Künzelsau, 2001]