28.06.2015 to 13. 09.2015
GASK
Barborská 51 – 53,
284 01 Kutná Hora
http://www.gask.cz/en/exhibitions/bodo-korsig-zone-pain
Bodo Korsig is an artist whose life and work crosses borders. Born in East Germany, he made forged his career in the West. His visual expression is symbiotically intertwined with ideas expressed through words. He rejects printmaking’s traditional form as an intimate idiom and blows it up to a scale that envelops us in a psychological environment. His graphic motifs refuse to stay obediently on a two-dimensional pictorial surface, instead liberating themselves from it and penetrating into the real space (and time) of the viewer as sculptural objects.
Despite (or precisely because of?) their starkly distilled graphic character, Korsig’s works continually hover between areas of possible interpretation – enigmatically, evocatively, teasingly. Primitive or ultra-complex? Distant past or imagined future? Deadly serious or playfully ironic? Freud or punk? We are required, compelled by Korsig’s images to explore their possible meaning though rational analysis and intuitive association. In doing so, we find ourselves exploring our own capacity to decode the world around us.
Everything Korsig presents us with is a kind of examination. He immerses himself in improbability in order to research inner states of mind that actually, brutally, passionately define the reality of human civilisation. His ‘stem-cell’ iconography suggests an eternal multiplicity of potential outcomes – in the natural selection of evolution and in the fate of man. Questions to answer, paths to take, survival or extinction…
Central to Bodo Korsig’s exhibition at GASK is his series of monumental woodcuts on canvas conceived as a kind of point-blank dialogue with the poem ‘the new horde’ by Scardanelli, portraying a vision of humanity’s descent into an apocalyptic abyss. In these works we sense both the echoes of primordial violence and a symbolic witness to wildfire conflict in the globalised 21st century. Korsig’s intense discourse with the written word finds its logical materialisation in his artist’s books, a representative selection of which we are also exhibiting. In recent years, Korsig’s existential poetics have found an outlet in video pieces reflecting both lyrical wonder and the disturbing tension between states of bondage and release. These are being shown in GASK’s Silverbox space.
In his work, Korsig brings us strange beauty, restless ambiguity and dark humour. He sees mental discomfort as a path to authentic self-understanding.
Richard Drury