POSIITIV

Tobias Grewe - Photography and Video
Heiko Räpple - Sculpture

Curator of the exhibition: Julia Ritterskamp, Düsseldorf

February 18 to April 1, 2017

The exhibition POSIITIV brings together two artists at Galerie Judith Andreae, Tobias Grewe and Heiko Räpple, who could not be more different at first glance: Tobias Grewe is a self-taught artist working in photography, while Räpple graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy with a master's degree in sculpture. One relies on a camera and computer, while the other requires substantial material supplies, a large studio, and various tools for his artistic process.

However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear why these artists have been paired: they both create structures, with Tobias Grewe expressing them through photography and video, while Heiko Räpple translates them into sculptural visual results.

Throughout these structures, both artistic processes involve formal considerations based on oppositions: What is inside, what is outside? What is negative, what is positive? What is hard, what is soft? What is small, what is large?

What is stable and what is flexible? What is static and what is in motion? What is light and what is heavy? The list could go on indefinitely.

In this context, the title of the exhibition also makes sense. The large letters placed in the center simultaneously form the Roman numeral Two: Two artists, two genres, and dialectics as the foundation of the artistic working process find their expression here. By designing the card, one automatically thinks of the word "Negativ" as a counterpart to "Positiv." However, the word itself is intentionally absent; it is not manifested.

The artistic work of Grewe and Räpple is characterized by a process of weighing opposites (such as over- and underexposure or the question of the outside or inside of a work of art). This approach leads to visual discoveries that invite the viewer to actively question the works. Specifically, in the works of Tobias Grewe, the question arises: When does a photograph become painting? When does it become drawing?

Where is the boundary, if it even exists?

Structures here are visual results of a formal discourse that ultimately transcends the medium of photography as a mere representation of reality. Simultaneously, Heiko Räpple repeatedly raises the question through the lens of structures: What can sculpture be, and what is sculpture, really? We find ourselves in the midst of a discussion about artistic genres and whether they still matter today—where it has become quite common for students to practice sculpture in the academy class of a renowned photography professor.

Heiko Räpple and Tobias Grewe explore formal aspects by visually juxtaposing thesis and antithesis until a solution or new understanding emerges in the form of synthesis. This leads both artists to compositions that ultimately yield the same insights for the viewer through different media.

Another striking similarity—more on a sensory than an intellectual level—is both artists' sensitivity to a certain monochrome aesthetic, which, however, is not the subject or motivation of their working methods. Both lack the fear of beauty that often appears in the modern (art) world.

Fortunately for us.

-Julia Ritterskamp