Latest exhibition
Illusions for the human eye
The artist is very present; also for an audience less familiar with exhibitions. Today, technology makes it a requirement that everything that can be seen in computer animations digitally on screen is based on a similar construction as Wehner’s work. In the end, what appears to us in a film as a surface, is composed of a multitude of smooth surfaces, which are being more and more refined. Nowadays an almost infinite computing power creates illusions for the human eye. Sometimes this process is shown in documentaries about film productions. Also related to this is the computation of complex surfaces by decomposition into pixels (usually triangles), which can easily be anticipated.
Archaic sculptures
Structure asks for constitution
When presented with the opportunity, it would be advisable to examine whether and how artists anticipated technical principles, which later found their way into daily life. From the first cave paintings to today, in fine arts, poetry and music, interesting discoveries are to be made. Wehner’s goal is not, as it is with films, to create an illusion that pretends something. The structure and the built are intentionally visible. Faust's question of what the world holds together in the innermost is less about a technical construction. Similar with Wehner. The structure makes us ask for constitution, the form points to the being to be explored.
Art transcends material
With the processing of the material by the artist, corrugated cardboard becomes art. The material goes through a process by Wehner's applied procedures. Exactly as the paint application on canvas. If successful, the raw material of little value becomes something which convinces the artist and also the viewer. We cannot really fathom this transformation process. Design rules for form and colour, recognition of the brain’s perception principles, references to art history — many approaches are possible.
Wehner’s work creates anticipation which begins at a point of artistic creation with strongly cultic impetus. The idea that artistic work can also serve the beautiful, the religious, the visualisation of domination is not his thing. However, he prompts towards awareness that art changes, indeed transcends, the material used. An example: even the famed alleged sculpture and packaging artist Christo creates something entirely different. He does not pack, he reveals. Fabric, cords and in 1995 the Reichstag building were the only material. What really happened could be seen as a kind of art cleansing, at least a caesura for the historically beleaguered house.
Conversion is one of the religious mysteries. Pending on the ability of an artist, one of the secrets of art is to create things of the highest quality out of profane materials. Made of cardboard, lead or Bitumen also.
Art from profane materials
'As a user of art, the artist becomes a master of topics and interpretation. If it succeeds, then we understand what the artist asks for, then they perhaps even become our very own questions which we become aware of while contemplating the sculpture we are viewing. In the age of the rational it appears that everything subordinates to reason, which however often enough is only enforced irrationality, and the question arises: The exhibition with the work of Bernd Wehner is called 'In unsecured mode.’
Peter Nüremerg