AUGUST 2017
Artist statement
by Axel Teichmann
I am interested in people. The people portrayed singularly in my art are strong in expression and creativity - they even become heroic creators themselves. Great skills are symbolized by technical artifacts. There is always an interplay of changes in the environment caused by people and the resulting, retroactive influence on those involved. In this respect, I would like to contribute to a kind of awareness of the individual, who can then ultimately only achieve their personal goals in the community.
MAY 2017
Exhibition review for the exhibition "Face and Mask" on the online portal: www.laterne19.jimdo.com/mug
by Hans Brinkmann
(...) Axel Teichmann also thinks of digitization - of pixelation, also of censorship when he thinks about identity. The unclear, technically invisible thing is for him the face, while the restored image is the mask - one would have expected it the other way round. This is how you start to brood.
The world is a stage, says Shakespeare (in "As You Like It"). And the poet not only names the social or erotic masquerades by name, but also presents the ages - childhood, youth, adulthood, “best” years, old age - as roles that are played. (...)
OCTOBER 2015
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog GOTT & DIE LUST ZUR MECHANIK
by Dr. Irmgard Sedler
(...) Axel Teichmann can draw on experiences from beyond postmodernism when he puts the paradigm man - machine, man - technology, man - invention at the center of his art. It is his merit to have transferred this topic into the age of digital visual experience through a strong pictorial presence of the technoid with the means of the traditional art of painting. He has also succeeded in revealing new starting points. He is by no means concerned with the socio-ethical or religious dimension of the aforementioned relationship (...), but rather with harnessing it in the sense of a purely artistic concern: the societal process of technologizing life towards the digitization of reality delivers the artifacts to the artist, which appear in his works as set pieces. It is always about the question of the reproducibility of reality - analogue and virtual - in art, or rather the mystical dimension of the associated art process, which in turn creates the third reality, the artistic one. Axel Teichmann's large-scale painting “Redemption” also belongs in this context. An "astronaut" in a strangely old-fashioned space suit lifts off the ground in the pose of the crucified, the Lamb of God follows his flight in a pixelated tablet display from the bottom right. On the left, another “prop” - a fog lamp - hovers in the room. or about the mystical dimension of the associated art process, which in turn creates the third reality, the artistic one. Axel Teichmann's large-scale painting “Redemption” also belongs in this context. An “astronaut” in a strangely old-fashioned space suit lifts off from reality in the pose of the crucified, the Lamb of God follows his flight in a pixelated tablet display from the bottom right. On the left, another “prop” - a fog lamp - hovers in the room. or about the mystical dimension of the associated art process, which in turn creates the third reality, the artistic one. Axel Teichmann's large-scale painting “Redemption” also belongs in this context. An "astronaut" in a strangely old-fashioned space suit lifts off the ground in the pose of the crucified, the Lamb of God follows his flight in a pixelated tablet display from the bottom right. On the left, another “prop” - a fog lamp - hovers in the room. the Lamb of God follows its flight in a pixelated tablet representation from the bottom right. On the left, another “prop” - a fog lamp - hovers in the room.
The Lamb of God follows its flight in a pixelated tablet display from the bottom right. On the left, another “prop” - a fog lamp - hovers in the room.
The representation of people and objects alternates between a hyper-realistic approach and visual, artistically painterly represented pixelation. This realistic accuracy in the design of the astronaut stands in contrast to the dream-hypnotic atmosphere of the room in which the action seems frozen. Atmospheric as well as narrative compositional elements converge here to the image of the art space in which the Jesus / astronaut fictional figure - illusion of a fictional, never-explained biography - unfolds its "life" between real and avatar, between world and cyberspace. (...)
MARCH 2015
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog COORDINATES
by Dr. Claus Baumann
Technological development and the co-ordinates of art - a philosophical note on Axel Teichmann's exhibition "Coordinates"
» Il faut être absolument modern«- Arthur Rimbaud gave this slogan to his artistic contemporaries in 1873. Prima facie, the coordinates for the development of art are given: Art should always act at eye level with the current state of social, scientific and technical development. About thirty-five years later, Rimbaud's motto seems to have been radicalized in the program of Italian Futurism, especially in its utopia of the merging of the human body with technology. In a way, this anticipated today's cyborg fantasies. However, the futuristic apotheosis and aestheticization of technology achieved a cruel consequence in the war euphoria of some of its central representatives. But at the latest with the high-tech world wars, the industrialized mass murder in Auschwitz and the nuclear armament disavowed any naive belief in progress and technology. In addition, there is the fear that the technical artifacts no longer function as a means with which we can freely determine and autonomously realize our set purposes: Rather, technological development is producing ever stronger "practical constraints" to which we are subject.
But, with these diagnoses and dystopian fears, has that Rimbaudian program also been dealt with - his demand that one should be absolutely modern? Rimbaud's motto would be doubly misunderstood if it were interpreted in the sense of an aestheticization of technological innovation or as a demand for art to be subject to the social development of science and technology, as art constantly chasing after technological innovations. Wasn't the absolute modernity of art in its striving for emancipation against any form of domination? The arts had only freed themselves from aristocratic and clerical dictates at the turn of the 19th century. They had developed into a social sphere of their own and themselvesestablished as a collective singular art . In this respect, a renewed submission to a social area, namely to science and technology, would be a step backwards in their development, more precisely: a loss of their gained potential for autonomy. With its submission to the process of technological innovation, the development of art would again become dependent on it, which would contradict its own striving for autonomy - a striving for autonomy for which the name Arthur Rimbaud stands as a cipher. In this renewed, complete dependence, art would not be "absolutely modern".
It is true that art cannot completely isolate itself from society, as some extreme representatives of the so-called l'art pour l'art dohave requested. Such an undertaking would be doomed to failure; Art loses its relation to social dynamics, whose innovative moment is also technological development. Without the societal dynamic impulses, art would threaten to freeze. So is art in a certain way dependent on technological innovations? Photo, film, video or internet art would all not be possible without the technological prerequisites of photo, film, video and the internet. However, the relationship between art innovation and social technological development does not necessarily have to be designed as a dependency of art or understood accordingly. The autonomy of art in no way means isolation from other areas of society; rather, art can focus on theirsRelate to science and technology in an independent way and for this very reason develop autonomously, i.e. autonomously.
With its independent appropriation of technical innovations, art can demonstrate that other uses and uses of technology than the usual are possible, which perhaps were not initially discovered or were intended, but which are inherent in the potential of technical artifacts. In this way, art helps to expose the talk of "factual constraint" as an objective semblance; a semblance that disguises the possible uses and the associated fundamental possibility of a choice of options for action. One of the emancipatory potentials of art lies in this exposure.
When art is considered an autonomoussocial area relates to technological developments, then it does so according to its own chosen means of expression, its own mode of expression, its self-imposed procedure, its independent formal language and formal laws. Otherwise it would either be used as a propaganda instrument or as commissioned or mere utility art in the service of society or of certain government interests; to that extent it loses its status as an independent area of society - an area that develops according to its own laws. Artistic productions could no longer be framed with the collective singular »art«. Art would again be broken down into different arts, each of which would be appropriately integrated in accordance with the most varied of interests.
But is art really able to innovate completely independently and in accordance with its own laws? Yes and no. The technological innovations are usually not produced by art itself. Art can only appropriate or represent these innovations in its own way. Art can only act independently and autonomously in the manner in which it is appropriated, deployed, used, or addressed and reflected upon new technologies; in this regard, it can be innovative and original. As a self-determined form of activity, it is free art.
Despite the fact that art is in a position to show as yet undiscovered possible uses and to shed light on alternatives, the technical pessimistic assessment outlined at the beginning with regard to its basic assumption has not yet been refuted. This basic assumption, which is also the basis of the talk of the »factual constraint character of technology«, consists in the fact that with the use of technical artefacts certain »preliminary decisions« are always made before we as »users« - thus also in the variant of artistic appropriation - would still be able to set independent purposes. Because the complexity of technology and its own dynamic development would increasingly undermine our human intervention possibilities and limit our ability to set purposes more and more. What is ignored in this diagnosis, however, is that the development of technology itself is always already embedded, namely in social and cultural conditions. For the development and implementation of certain technologies, not only technical criteria or the structural "path dependencies" of their development are decisive, but very often criteria that arise from the social, political-economic, legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself as a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. that the development of technology for its part is always already embedded, namely in social and cultural conditions. For the development and implementation of certain technologies, not only technical criteria or the structural "path dependencies" of their development are decisive, but very often criteria that arise from the social, political-economic, legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself to be a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. that the development of technology for its part is always already embedded, namely in social and cultural conditions. For the development and implementation of certain technologies, not only technical criteria or the structural "path dependencies" of their development are decisive, but very often criteria that arise from the social, political-economic, legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself as a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. For the development and implementation of certain technologies, not only technical criteria or the structural "path dependencies" of their development are decisive, but very often criteria that arise from the social, political-economic, legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself to be a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. For the development and implementation of certain technologies, not only technical criteria or the structural "path dependencies" of their development are decisive, but very often criteria that arise from the social, political-economic, legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself as a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. arise from legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself as a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations. arise from legal or cultural spheres of social life. From the point of view of the social formation of technology, technology development shows itself to be a mere partial moment of social development: technology development is permeated by political-economic hegemony and power constellations.
In the constant revolutionization of the social mode of production, especially due to technological innovation, there is at the same time the potential for social and creative change. Because this revolutionization is not subject to any determinism; rather, it always opens up the space for choices and decision-making options. The reflexive look at these revolutionizations, which each time make new decisions necessary, at the same time gives an indication of the basic design possibilities and the basic possibility of a choice of alternatives. These in turn point to a fundamental changeability of the social work organization and our way of life. As a result, a political character of any technology is implicitly given and must be taken into account.
The concrete design and change in our living conditions are always socially controversial and politically contested. Correspondingly, the criteria for assessing the specific content of the social reproductive context are also controversial. This applies in particular to the assessment of what is to be regarded as emancipatory in the specific organized work process - be it high-tech or not - and what must be understood as regressive or even barbaric.
In this discourse, art also makes its social contribution to emancipatory reflection. Artistic productions, their appropriation or representation of technology make it possible to tap into the emancipatory as well as the destructive potentials of technological means or to illuminate them critically. Because of the inherent regularity of form in art and because of its structural "puzzle character" (Theodor W. Adorno), artistic productions stimulate such a reflection. This thematization is always already a reflexively broken one, but at the same time it also has an emancipatory potential. This characterizes their enigmatic character; it makes up their rebus structure: the always open to interpretation, The mostly puzzling structure of the works (including situational ones such as happenings) can put the recipient in an actively interpretive position; a situation that then sets in motion an independent process of perception and reflection - often in contradiction to the supposed or possibly real intention of the artist. In this way, a dialogical relationship mediated through the work is established and possible, ie an objective mediation of dialogicity, in which art with its specific means of expression functions as a medium in which the recipients ultimately act as "emancipatory viewers" (Jacques Rancière) or act as emancipatory spectators. In this sense, art is discursive in a different way than philosophy, for example.
Axel Teichmann's exhibition "Coordinates" thematizes "technology" and the "technologization of life" in precisely this rebus-like, puzzling manner, open to interpretation, in which the recipients can actively participate through their questions and their possible interpretations in realizing the works as an effective structure. The technical artefacts seem to be presented in an antiquated way in Teichmann's oeuvre: People who seem strained or even overwhelmed are presented caught between technical artefacts and designs - between artefacts that stood for innovation in the previous century, but now represent something long gone. Even the choice of his artistic means of expression seem antiquated compared to contemporary digital art: painting, graphics and sculpture. But the graphic 'pixelation' of some of his pictures and the sculptural representations of people, which almost dissolve in low-pixel graphics, seem to allude to digitization. Possible questions arise: Is the graphically static and anti-futuristic appearance of outdated technology perhaps itself a statement compared to the exuberant dynamics of technological development that surrounds us? A statement that emphasizes the autonomy of art in terms of the choice of its means of expression? It seems that in Teichmann's works Günter Anders Rede is satirized by the »antiquatedness of man« or even confronted with an »antiquatedness of technology«, which is always out of date with its social assertion. Does the technological development appear in Teichmann's pictures as a curse or a blessing? These or other questions can arise from the irritations that viewing the work may leave behind - irritations.
It is only interpretative analysis that makes art a living one. She is able to discursively realize the language of art. It completes the productions of the respective artist as living works - that is, in their social effectiveness. In any case, the coordinates for this are given in Teichmann's exhibition: coordinates of a dialogue between the formal language of his works and the verbalized language of the critics and the eloquent language of thought of the recipients.
MARCH 2015
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog COORDINATES
by Dr. Irmgard Sedler
Under the sign of construction and destruction; Axel Teichmann and the human-machine paradigm
“ The railways have a special relationship to revolution, reaction and war . Whoever really owns them or only their material can make whole peoples motionless. ” Jacob Burckhardt, 1852
"I want to praise rockets and projectiles, protons and electrons, praise uranium and praise the energy that man's hand gave back freedom for his service." Werner Bergengruen, 1950
The painterly work of Axel Teichmann from recent years brought together in the exhibition revolves with considerable concentration on the socially and culturally acute topic of the relationship between people and their own creative power, especially as a technical invention, since the Industrial Revolution at the latest.
From the position of the artist, who is entitled to the role of a supplier of new meaning and significance in contemporary social discourse, Teichmann approaches the discourse in his own way. He does this in the knowledge of the complexity of this relationship, which is so rich in complexity and contradictions , and in the knowledge of the views on this topic that are “prefabricated” via tradition . His position is based not least on the preference of the "late-born", who can fall back on experiences of the world beyond postmodernism. It is his merit , the topic man - machine, man - invention with a visually strong presence in the digital age and to have disclosed new starting points that are less to be understood in the sense of the ethical-social valuation of this relationship than in the metaphorical sense in the service of an art concern: art and its "truthfulness" in dealing with three-dimensional or virtually one-dimensional "reality". In this context, Teichmann admittedly takes up the dilemma of art and its reproducibility of reality, as René Magritte already put it in his time and how it is today when things flow into one another factual and virtual world is much more complicated than it was a hundred years ago.
Axel Teichmann consistently uses these topoi of the technical and technoid on a formal level . The traditional lines of interpretation of this relationship - here the progress- affirming euphoria in view of the positive potential of the technical inventions, there the eschatological fear of the machine power dominating man - are by no means alien to him. In his works, often set in seemingly narrative contexts, the symbolically laden objects of the technoid that have congealed into a cipher for the respective position - telephone, railroad and airship of the beginning ("buoyancy"), rocket, All and astronaut (“sloping position”), screen and cyberspace (“intersection”), which often act together in a kind of sampling (“do you see me?”) Or go together with a religious pathos formula (“redemption”).
All of these objects are combined as set pieces - both from the real and the virtual world - by Axel Teichmann seemingly quite arbitrarily and assigned to any personnel in his unmistakable art / dream spaces that seem to have been lifted out of space and time. Them all, objects like human image protagonist is a coolness and aloofness, a rigid bar any emphasis own, which also holds the viewer wanted to distance him on the one hand, something of a mystery in terms of the image events and , on the other hand, a generous interpretation of space it leaves.
With this attitude, Axel Teichmann undermines the severity of the traditional significance that has grown over these objects through cultural history. The artist's hang-gliders (“buoyancy”) do not want to be salvific “Elias wagons” (Gottfried Keller) that elevate people like gods; his rockets do not conjure up nuclear blues (Carl Zuckmayer) as an apocalyptic mood when they soar through magenta-red “landscapes” and meet hunters' stalls (“new territory”); and finally , the deep red "tree landscapes" evoked are not counterparts to "dusty cement worlds" (Berthold Brecht) and certainly not as a contaminated living space as a result of the dangerous liaison between humans and nuclear power, as Wystan Hugh Auden made the subject of his poetry in 1947 (The Age of Anxiety) . Ultimately, Teichmann's bare groups of trees (“where am I?”) Are nothing more than appearances of the real landscape, wishful reflections of the natural in a virtually / technoid-generated “landscape space ” in which the natural coordinates have been lost.
As much as the artist tries to hide his own emotionality and state of mind behind the “pictorial narrative”, which is often intended as a charade, under the sign of the depersonalized, machine- automated, he occasionally leaves the battlefield to irony. By including entire advertising quotations (“exchange” ) or mathematical-astronomical formulas and sketches that confidently declare the right to “explain the world”, spatial orientation and communication sovereignty in his compositions, he demonstrates their ineffectiveness . As spatial, moral or technical social coordinates, they are of no use in a world in where real and virtual flow ever closer together ("crossing" ), so that humans and animals can only cope with the delimitation / disorientation in the hypnotic state, in dreams or in imponderability - but certainly with the help of art ("self- thinker ") , Page 45; “Salvation”, page 25; “The Astronaut's Dream”; “Imponderabilia”).
As a result, the figures in Teichmann's pictorial worlds appear strangely remote, as dream figures from another dimension. They rarely have individual traits and mostly appear as types and roles (astronaut, welder, revolutionary, office person): In their artificiality as a hybrid between man and automaton, they always give the whole scene something uncanny in the sense of a living-totem or dead -Lively. In general, the uncanny runs through the entire work of this artist as a basic feeling . An echo of pittura metafisica remains palpable.
Axel Teichmann also takes up stylistic suggestions from his role model René Magritte. His acrylic paintings consciously focus on the representational, on the representation of the object in its entire plastic perception. However, this happens less surrealistic than hyperrealistic (astronaut costume, wallpaper, clothing). The smooth surfaces, the closed but detailed facial expressions, the dream-hypnotic room atmosphere converge to the image of the art space in which art figures - illusions of a fictional, never-explained biography - unfold their "life" between real and avatar, between world and cyberspace. With the trick The pixelation, which is, however, put into the picture in a handcrafted and painterly manner, the painter not only practices the decomposition of the figuration or creates a figurative cipher of the digital, but also appropriates and converts the technique of dissolving into a symbol of the act of art. It stands for the osmosis of real and virtual and their transport into the artistic.
Congruent in content, but stylistically different from the paintings, the drawing rooms in Axel Teichmann's work exude their aura of cold aesthetics through carefully placed hatching and controlled line setting.
MARCH 2011
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog SCHRÄGLAGE
by Ludwig Laibacher
Inclined position
Human. Machine. Artificial intelligence. The supercomputer "Watson" defeated two people in the American quiz show Jeopardy. This event was quickly celebrated as an epochal victory for artificial intelligence over the human brain. And once again it seemed like people were only too happy to give up. In the opinion of experts, however, there is no reason to bow to the latest golem this time either. The electronic challenger could only win because every now and then he managed to convert his purely quantitative into a qualitative ability - basically it is just a monster search engine. The IBM device is far from real intelligence. Like his long- forgotten predecessors, Watson lacks a crucial moment: the ability to speak. The hype surrounding Watson points to a border area that Axel Teichmann's work has long talked about. His field of experimentation is the advanced sciences of the last turn of the century and his research object is people who have lost their old understanding of roles - and thus apparently also their language. No matter how many people are on a Teichmann painting and no matter whether they are on earth or in space, in a disaster area or in the virtual, they seem paralyzed in their actions and deprived of their means of expression . Even if there are indications of a supposedly familiar world - the domestic living room, the sports hall or the laboratory - this room remains strange and the air there does not seem to have the usual, tolerable composition. Has an unknown gas been added? Are you running out of oxygen? The central irritation emanating from Teichmann's pictures is the atmosphere of suffocating silence.
Athlete. Technician. Astronaut. Teichmann's staff always try their hand at roles. It is the ballet from Marcel Duchamp's bachelor machine turned into the 21st century : instead of judges, soldiers or lawyers , technicians, athletes, models or space travelers march here . But Duchamp was about power, which enacts authoritarian regulations, invents social necessities and strictly controls compliance with them; it was about the reduction to types, the loss of being human. The situation has worsened since then . The contemporary man has internalized the moment of control, he is his own judge and its primary goal is the fulfillment of meaningless processes. But no matter how hard he tries, whatever phenomena he wants to measure himself with, he only achieves an unsatisfactory result. He can no longer even fulfill the role models that he has given himself. The people portrayed in Teichmann's paintings are marked by this disease , they feel a failure even before they have even started something.
Nature. Catastrophe. Archaic. In pictures like “Vulcanus” (2007) or “Ausbruch” (2010) it becomes clear that Teichmann's art is located in a science world, but not in science fiction. An archaic early world seems to be much closer than any future of any kind . The story describes a circle. Volcanoes explode and make the civilizational appear ridiculous: a man struggles with the lava as if he could control the eruptions like the embers on a table grill. As a motif, the blessing and curse of the fire and the fire-breathing mountain recur in the work “Ausbruch”. While on one picture plane a uniformed man is the fire carries through different ages, ( indicated in the background by cave drawings and remains of Christian mosaics), an astronaut moves away from the earth on a second level in order to supposedly continue the earthly progression into space. In front of him, however , is a volcano - unclear whether it marks the origin or the destination of the space excursion.
Body. Psyche. Dream figure. But Teichmann's diagnosis of the time does not remain in the sphere of technology and world domination, which is mostly represented by male beings . To illustrate the struggle between ideal and reality, between ego and image, he has borrowed artfully from fashion and sport. The result is dazzling puzzles. Here, too, it is first about stereotypes, but he admits to them, beyond the uniform, the excitement of physical strength or the radiance of sensual stimuli. The men (pilots, scientists, office workers) are joined by women and the women are joined by strange doubles. They are losing in their photographic image or in Second Life. In “Das Original” (2010), for example, the rear view of a beautiful woman dissolves into the pale pixel grid of a digital camera . "Jetzt" (2010) shows an artistic gymnast doing a somersault. As she struggles against gravity, the space around her dissolves into mere grids and lines . On the other hand, the process is more advanced in "Virtual Figure", where a blonde loses her physicality . She is only held by geometric figures, while her arms and legs have already been transformed into algorithms.
In the picture “Schräglage” (2011), which gave the exhibition its title, all coordinates seem to be completely mixed up . Axel Teichmann brings together a lot of motifs here. We meet the astronaut, the volcano, the marginalized person. With the difference that the viewer now looks from an unspecified outside at a hustle and bustle to which something childish-childish clings. The world is just a toy world. Where there was earth there is only the moon, where “center” is an unnamed periphery.
JUNE 2010
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog UTOP
by Vera Schuck M.A.
UTOP
"Nothing ages faster than utopia." (1)
Man has never been freed from dreams, illusions and utopias. He was always on the lookout for better, more beautiful things, and he constructed environments in which these ideas could partially become reality. Nowadays he achieves this, among other things, by creating digital worlds that reveal the mystery of human nature more and more clearly: his natural artificiality.
The term “utopia” stands for an “unrealizable idea, a dream for the future and a dream” (2), which is often only partially fulfilled. A utopia can also be understood as an illusion, but also as a vision of something. The entire culture of mankind is based, among other things, on visions and dreams of the future.
Axel Teichmann's art picks up on these connections and questions the "achievements" of mankind that have arisen through so-called progress - in particular the role of technology and science. He presents the viewer with fascinating pictorial landscapes, perfectly staged scenarios that appear self-contained, clear and unambiguous. But on closer inspection, doubts and skepticism arise: What exactly are the people depicted doing ? How are they influenced in their actions and what goals are they actually pursuing? And: Where does the world created by the artist meet with the world that can be experienced by the senses? Though the restless and lost in work People appear very strong and determined, their actions appear meaningless, incomprehensible and questionable. With his pictures, the artist emphasizes a vital question that is imposed on many people today: What do we do what we do for?
The apparent emptiness of meaning, which in many areas of modern man's life lies like a black shadow on the mind, breaks open volcanically and disastrously in Teichmann's works. Believed freedom and self-determination becomes a farce and mocks everything for which generations have fought with heart and soul. Teichmann's characters are metaphorical for the isolation and excessive demands of people today. The space they created for themselves begins to overwhelm them. The philosopher Maurice Blanchot formulates this as follows: "Everyone (...) has his own prison, but in this prison everyone is free." (3)
And so the security guard depicted in the painting lets himself be distracted from playing with a rocket and does not notice the impending danger of an attack. In the case of the »Utop« picture, too, it is not clear whether the danger has already passed and the situation is being brought under control by the people in yellow suits , or whether it is the smoke that creates the threat. The helpers seem to be completely absorbed in what they are doing.
Here, too, details that the artist uses effectively are interesting: cables attached to the waistband, which provide no indication of a connection with anything , and the red, waving flags, which when put together reveal the word »utop« . The viewer may suspect that this could be an excerpt from the word »utopia«. He is invited to let his gaze wander, and here too he misses the lack of an occasion for action within this scene . It is remarkable how Axel Teichmann creates different versions of perfect utopias in some of his works and plays through final scenarios on an aesthetic level - skillfully and radically. This is very clear with the Images »Erbruch« and »Vulcanus« can be seen. The artist anticipates what the viewer only rudely dares to imagine: chaos, deconstruction and confusion. He skilfully uses his painterly virtuosity and amazes not only with the use of graphic elements, but also with surprising color compositions and formal games.
Teichmann's pictures, however, not only show final scenarios. He paints figures that have grace and radiate dignity in their surroundings. The viewer looks into alert and expectant faces. He is confronted with a beauty that seems aloof and perfect; for example in the picture "Virtual Figure" and "Figure in the Disturbance Room". Detached from the context of advertising, self-confident women present themselves who have strengths and thus appear unassailable. It too is accompanied by an aura of perfection. Teichmann plays with different forms of digitization , especially in these pictures, and lets figures immerse themselves in virtual spaces. In the picture »Das Original «, on which a female figure can be seen, the viewer does not know who carried out the digitization and which one represents the image and which one represents the original. The artist creates tension because he brings the familiar into other contexts.
The artist's pictures also allow the viewer to become an discoverer. In the picture "The Passenger" one is amazed by the mischievous expression of the passenger and realizes that he is holding a paper airplane in his hand - ready to be thrown. Axel Teichmann's works show a wide variety of scenarios. They appeal not only to the senses, but also to our ethical awareness. Ultimately, it is not about the question of the meaning of the action, but about the following: What is the person responsible for as an individual?
Teichmann's art not only invites you to reflect on this topic, but also forces the viewer to deal with himself. He is asked to ponder his role in society. He should think about his work and think about the future of nature and its conditions - but also act.
Axel Teichmann's pictures are an opportunity to rethink old ways and patterns. There is still the possibility of a new awareness in which action can regain meaning and joy in life and the courage to realize creative potential, natural beauty and aesthetics can manifest in everyday life.
(1) Sommer, Tim: art magazine January 2010.
(2) Duden: dictionary of origin. Q&A Brockhaus 2007.
(3) Blanchot in Bauman, Zygmunt: strollers, gamblers and tourists. Essays on Postmodern Lifestyles. His Verlag 1997, page 120.
JULY 2008
Catalog text in the exhibition catalog MASCHINE.MACHT.MENSCH.
by Dr. Barbara Sutter
MACHINE.POWER.HUMAN.
The topos that pervades Axel Teichmann's work is humans in artificial environments - in environments that, although created by human actions, no longer seem controllable by them . Be it situations of sporting competition, scenarios of technical threats, sequences of individual self-designs - again and again the individual striving for the mastery of inner and outer nature strikes against the individual as a power that he can no longer control himself.
In this way, the athlete, whom Axel Teichmann makes the subject of his work in the figure of the boxer, the sprinter, and the footballer, becomes the subject of his work insofar as he has absolute body control , but the confrontation with the specifications and requirements is more athletic Competitions are , as it were, second nature. The individual is at the mercy of this second nature: self-control becomes self-sustaining through the constellation of competitive arrangements typical of sport - meaningless and limited to the structures of the struggle. At the same time , the struggle exercises the real fascination of sport: as the struggle of the individual against himself in the form of ongoing self-discipline, as a fight against others as a competition for the higher degree of such discipline. It is this fascination that Axel Teichmann addresses in his pictures (“sprint”, “powerlessness”, “loss of control”, “duel”).
While the control of an inner nature is in the foreground in these pictures, another part of Axel Teichmann's pictures focuses on the control of the external nature and its consequences. The desire to subjugate the earth, to rule it through calculation and to instrumentalize it for one's own benefit overcomes the individual - the protagonists are helpless, even uncomprehending, when faced with the effects of their own actions . “The machine threw the pilot off; it races blindly into the room. ”(Max Horkheimer) - This disturbing, even destructive experience of modern humans is a recurring motif (“ Vulcanus ”,“ Boom Boom ”,“ Accident ”,“ Incident ”).
The ambiguity of the promise of individual freedom is also a topos of the work. The possibility of individuality becomes an imposition - to stage oneself as an unmistakable being, even though an unavoidable demand on the contemporary individual, becomes an inevitable task at which the individual can only fail: it always encounters expectations that it cannot meet, and categories who has to fill it out. It always comes across stencils into which it has to be fitted (“mannequin”). This also applies to mobility, which seems to be necessary in a globalized, medialized world, but direction and speed are strictly specified for the individual. If the search for one's own rhythms, one's own structures can resist these restrictions, it still seems strangely antiquated and thus always discredited (“movement”, “inward”).
It is these ambivalences of gains in freedom and the resulting impositions that shape the work of Axel Teichmann and determine the style of his work. Like the subjects of his pictures , the style of the paintings is also irritating: although representational elements dominate the pictures, they are broken by visual alienation. For example, areas of color appear that cannot be assigned to any logical objectivity (“DING”, “in work”). Such breaks with the figurative, mimetic style of painting are interventions in a rational understanding of space and objects that mark the transition of rationality. With the help of these visual inventions, the images achieve two things: While On the one hand they lose a connection to real people, objects or landscapes, on the other hand they gain access to the emotions of their recipients - to the supposedly unreal, irrational. It is not only these additions that are remarkable about Axel Teichmann's style, his handling of the representational itself is also instructive: through pronounced metaphors, it loses its original and general message handed down through trained eyesight. This effect is reinforced by a contrast system based on the tension between finely formulated parts of the picture and gestural, quickly applied layers of paint (“powerlessness”, “strfall”) and abstract Surfaces and plastic objects or figures (“sky”, “duel”, “sprint”, “view”, “threatened”).
Machine, power, human are the elements of a triad that Axel Teichmann works on in this way in order to provoke irritation in the face of the order of the modern world, which is believed to be so secure.