Exhibition
Visual Music
March 31 – May 19 2012
Press release: “We are particularly pleased that we were now able to put together the last works of Claus Böhmler in a single show. The works cover the years 2004 to today and include videos, installations and silkscreen prints.
Claus Böhmler (*1939) studied in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf in the 1960s and is a former student of Josef Beuys. For almost 30 years (until 2005) he was professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg. His last major solo exhibitions were in 2001 at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel and in 1999 at the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
Böhmler was one of the first artists in Germany to be interested in the possibilities of image reproduction and its technique. Using simple and everyday materials, as well as a simple ironic questioning of technical mechanisms and a playful approach to the possibilities of a medium, he creates functions and references that are full of effects within their simplicity. He makes many media his own: He draws, writes, sets to music, collages, films and animates. His installations, readymades, drawings and animations are all about the diversity of an object that grows beyond its traditional function. Kritsch questions Böhmler’s relationship between appearance and existence, original and copy, reality and image.