Antje Wachs Gallery is pleased to present new print works by Michael Botor.
In the project room, we present at the same time installations, drawings as well as works made of modelling clay by the Berlin artist Henrik Jacob.

In the large-sized interweaved monochrome surfaces made of varnish on aluminium by Michael Botor the viewer can loose oneself. There is hopelessness as far as the eye can see.
There is no initial point from which you could distinct the bottom from the above.
Instead, the lines proliferate or rather the vertical, horizontal and diagonal spaces.
Here and there they pack to the darkest point within the coloured material and seem to bare the entire framework.
Little by little, reality can be perceived. For that what we see are not merely abstractions, but geometrical modifications of the real, in which the abstract is only pretended in a complex way. Not the plains form the actual background for Botor’s ideas of images. It’s rather the artist’s real vivid moments that serve as an ideal background for his images in order to finally onvert to manifestations of an artistic language that oscillates between pictorial abstraction and formal reproduction that comes up to reality.
According to the laws within the images, spaces are fragmented, the vanishing-point is re-centred and symmetries are abandoned.
Do we not suddenly arrive at or into the actual reality that often enough seems contradictory and paradox? At this point, Michael Botor asserts his deciding iconographical object: the mirror.
The reflections are quasi “self-conscious”, autonomous ideas of motives that are directed at the imagination of the viewer. They are integrated into the images in the way that they almost melt into them; almost because you can hardly perceive them. The images are no mirrors which the viewer is “personally” addressed by in order to be able to reconstruct the immediate reference to reality.
He remains in presumptions regarding any kind of reality including that of one’s own self-perception. (The text contains abridgements from the text “Assumed Realities” (“Vermutete Realitäten”) by Lukas Glaic.)

The project room also presents the installation “Auf die Plätze, fertig, tot” by Henrik Jacob. The walls are covered by drawings and black and white works of modelling clay in between the viewer discovers the video “24h” which shows a digital radio alarm clock. The minutes go by in real-time, but they are taped.
The urging alarm clock reminds on the abidance in bed that expand since there is no power to get up at last. As a central installation on the floor, there is a mattress lying in the room. In the area of the pillow, there is an object that is remotely evocative of a hospital. The rest of the mattress is covered with grey and white modelling clay. It depicts a parking place of a hospital while the cover of clay is the asphalt with lay-bys.

Michael Botor (*1973 in Gleiwitz, Polen) lives and works in Braunschweig. In 2005, master degree at HBK Braunschweig (Professor Karl - Christoph Schulz). Selected solo exhibitons: Schattenbilder, Kunstkreis Kloster Brunshausen, Bad Gandersheim (2005);
selected group exhibitons: : XIV. Deutsche Internationale Grafik-Triennale, Kunstverein Frechen (2005), „mit der Zeit“, VHV Hannover (2005)

Henrik Jacob (*1972): lives and works in Berlin. 2001 master degree at Hochschule für Künste Bremen (Prof. Thiele). Selected solo exhibitons: „un sitio seguro“, taller la griega, Madrid, Spanien (April 2005), „Zeitbewegungen“, Schaukasten Ost-West-Straße, Hamburg (Sept. 2004); selected group exhibitions: „material:fotografie“, KX-Galerie, Hamburg (April 2005).