Wolfgang Laubersheimer, Design
The Werft11 gallery’s exhibition "NEE, ODER?" shows objects by the Cologne designer Wolfgang Laubersheimer. "Nee, oder?" – "Really?" – is a justified question. For nothing in this exhibition is as it seems.
The designer Günter Horntrich will swing the wooden spoon at the exhibition opening, and the famous Austrian cook Johann Lafer will moderate. The exhibited works of Wolfgang Laubersheimer, one of Germany’s most famous avant-garde designers, can have a similarly disorienting effect.
Laubersheimer is one of Germany’s most famous avant-garde designers. The provenance of his highly functional work is the discipline of design, but its appearance suggests a strange proximity to sculpture, his original field. His "Gespanntes Regal" is a functional piece of furniture striking for its ease and reduction. But as a typical Laubersheimer it is also a sculpture full of dynamics and rhythm – and tension. Built in 1984, the work still exerts its original fascination and is rightly considered one of the few furniture pieces of New German Design to become a classic.
Those familiar with Laubersheimer’s work know his tendency for – occasionally wicked – irony. The contrast between an adorable model train sauntering slowly along and a monolithic, functional steel body equipped with drawers and martial handles creates emotional dissonance in the viewer. Or consider the newly debuted stone slabs, which show the paths of German rivers in miniature scale. This is a distilled metaphor, a pure extract of Laubersheimer’s Amazonas Desk.
In addition to "Gespanntes Regal", the exhibition shows novel radiating objects and transformed pieces of the past. All works promote unexpectedly, and they promote the unexpected: the apparent contradiction between gentle and rough, gentle and brutal. In this opposition – heavy steal bodies woo tiny menacing lights – we find the tense-filled irony that Laubersheimer sees as an answer to his fear of romanticism.
Laubersheimer, a professor at the Köln International School of Design (KISD), cofounded the furniture company Unikate in 1982 and the Pentagon gallery in 1985. The "Pentagon Casino" received international attention at documenta 8, in Kassel.
Opening
Thursday 19 April 2012 at 19:00
Introduction, unexpectedly. A cook
Snacks, adventurous. A designer
Perspective, emotionally. Laubersheimer
Press kit
press.nee-oder.zip
