Clement Wolf: "REMIX-Material Archeology"
Nergis Abıyeva
In his new exhibition titled REMIX-Material Archeology, Clemens Wolf (b. 1981) has produced new works site specific to SANATORIUM, in which he has brought together all the mediums in his art production for more than twenty years with an introspective view. Wolf’s works were first exhibited in Turkey in 2019, also at SANATORIUM. In my research before our online interview with the artist between Istanbul and Vienna, I was struck by the category of “self” that was highlighted in the interviews and writings. It is frequently emphasized in the texts that Wolf only refers to himself (i.e. he is self-referential) disregarding the outside world, and that he wants to connote himself and his own artistic practice per se. However, believing that everything is inevitably reiterated and that artistic production is somehow a part of this,1 I wanted to go into more depth here instead of yielding to this statement.
This is because when looking at Wolf’s work, one gets the feeling that he knows many artists in the history of art, that he has analyzed countless works of art and pondered over the techniques developed in these works. In an interview, the artist responds to a question about his influences as follows: “Romantic landscape painters like Caspar David Friedrich, the use of the grid technique to enlarge paintings,2 serigraphy in Pop Art, the geometry and contrasts of Op-Art and several other visual effects have influenced me.” Immediately after these sentences, Wolf states that he “nevertheless doesn’t focus on these while working, it is just that they are embedded in his artistic vocabulary.”3 Remembering that nothing comes out of nothing, we can assume that these effects cannot really be restrained and that the visual effects embedded in Wolf’s artistic vocabulary have turned into a new and original art practice.
The courage of artists to attempt a new experiment each time who upon getting trained in two-dimensional disciplines, take their work to the third dimension attracts me as a viewer. In his first fence sculptures, made in 2010, Wolf makes large landscape paintings from photographs of demolished buildings and fences, focusing on “the beauty of decay” as he puts it.4 His first works to emphasize the material are gold-plated fences and shopping carts. More intrigued by the material itself then, Wolf starts skydiving in 2014. While foldings and preparing the parachute before each jump, the artist is fascinated by the layers of the material and incorporates parachutes into his art-making process.5 His “Parachute Works”, in which he transforms discarded and outdated parachutes, painting them in various colors, have been exhibited in many cities around the world.
In his series “Parachute Works” made up of paintings, objects, drawings and sculptures, Wolf places used parachutes on canvas or in site and freezes their folding parts with colored epoxy resin. Describing himself as a defender of sensuality, the artist’s rejection of a type of Sisyphean art as well as life is evident in every aspect of his work.
Where does the desire to reshape a discarded parachute and paint it gold come from? Although making art with this approach immediately brings to mind the notion of “upcycling,” Wolf's production can easily be considered within the framework of today’s object-oriented art. The endless energy and excitement in his manner when he depicted his collaboration with the material in our online conversation reinforced in my mind the relevance of his work with the new materialist thinking.
It is easy to see that Wolf’s approach to materials/objects is not instrumental.6 He does not approach the material in a didactic way, and neither does he try to “defeat the material.” Instead of adopting a hierarchical approach, Wolf collaborates with the material and wants to unlock its potential. As an artist who likes to work with his hands and makes all of his works himself, he talked about all materials as living beings in our online interview. It is evident that Wolf does not forcefully lead the production process; instead, he has learned to let things happen over time.7 The artist uses a piece of expanded metal as a brush and first applies a thick layer of oil paint on the canvas, dipping it in resin and adding pigment to create a densely textured, monochromatic composition. Intrigued by how pigment and the color of oil interact with each other to create different tones and to make up a sensuous surface, Wolf creates these works without touching the surface of the canvas, realizing them as a result of the dialogue between materials.
With the unique techniques he has developed, the artist makes us feel that he wants to include unexpected encounters in the gallery space as a white cube. At the age of 14, Wolf starts to make street art such as graffiti and murals, and after adopting the streets as his studio for ten years,8 he realizes that if he wants to make a living on art, he has to receive education. Using streets as his studio has influenced both his understanding of space and his artistic attitude to a great extent. Developing an approach that cannot be repeated, similar to Heraclitus who claims you can’t step into the same river twice, the artist makes us feel that he is essentially looking for the randomness, unpredictability and excitement of street art. The fact that he emphasizes so often that he only refers to his own works suggests that he is actually searching for his own roots. Wolf’s practice urges us to focus on the aesthetics of the unrepeatable. It reminds us that decay is a positive act of transformation and transmutation. The exhibition REMIX-Material Archeology makes us wonder about the next step of an artist who focuses on his own production.
1 The theoretical roots of this idea can be found in the concept of “intertextuality” developed by poststructuralist theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes in the 1960s. It is an important theory of criticism built on the idea that a text cannot exist solely on its own and must have been influenced, nourished and derived from previous texts. In his ongoing PhD thesis in the Art History program at Istanbul Technical University, Uras Kızıl uses the concept of “artistic intertextuality" to suggest that works exist as a result of relationality among themselves, thereby pointing out at an “artistic intertextuality” relationality. Offering a permeable and network-like reading, the concept of artistic intertextuality allows the reading of artistic works in terms of their contact with other analyses.
2 The gridding technique is a style of painting that has been used for centuries. We know that Albrecht Dürer developed what we might call a “drawing machine.” In the mid-15th century, before making frescoes, many artists would draw on paper, just recently invented, divide it and then transfer it to large wall surfaces. With the invention of photography in 1839 and its widespread use in the last quarter of the century, painting by framing photographs also became an academic method of learning.
3 Ana Bambic, “Vantage Point of Clemens Wolf”, https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/vantage-point-of-clemens-wolf-interview-2015, 29 Ocak 2015.
4 Talya Nakkaş, “Clemens Wolf ve Yunus Emre Erdoğan Sanatorium’da”, ArtDog Istanbul, https://artdogistanbul.com/clemens-wolf-ve-yunus-emre-erdogan-sanatoriumda/, November 25, 2021.
5 Ibid.
6 Uras Kızıl states that in pre-new materialist thought, the object fails to go beyond its status vis-a-vis the human subject in terms of possession. However, with the new materialist philosophy, ontological existence of objects, so far rendered as “means to an end” by human beings, begins to gain importance. See Uras Kızıl, “Yeni Materyalizm Nedir?”, https://argonotlar.com/yeni-materyalizm-nedir/, January 13, 2023.
7 Clemens Wolf “Line Drawings”, https://www.collectorsagenda.com/en/exhibitions/clemens-wolf, Accessed on January 22, 2023.
8 Ana Bambic, “Vantage Point of Clemens Wolf”, https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/vantage-point-of-clemens-wolf-interview-2015, January 29, 2015.
