Gert & Uwe Tobias

...first from Cologne to Heilbronn, then to Berlin and now to Hanover, where the twins Gert & Uwe Tobias are represented with a large-scale print on canvas in the group show made in germany, and in November to the MoMa in New York.

It doesn't happen every day that one can be successful internationally within such as short space of time with works originating in the world of printed graphics. However, both artists are relaxed about it all - as is always the case when someone succeeds in revivifying and remodelling a medium long believed to be extinct, in this case the woodcut. For instance, by extending the format, a compositional space is created that this medium normally lacks. And so the abstract and figured individual elements, applied in many-layered process, come to the fore in a strangely distorted and half-open space. When viewing the respective compositions in their entirety the erstwhile characteristic, hand-made impression disappears and formal and textual aspects come to the fore in Gert & Uwe Tobias' implementations. Their individual provenance is extremely diverse, be they borrowings from constructivism or paraphrases from art history -- one is constantly confronted by a work abounding with pictorial motifs. This current publication, entitled Gert & Uwe Tobias, presents the typewriter illustrations as well as free, expressive drawings for the first time. The drawing itself takes on the status of an independent work here, that is to say we are not dealing with preliminary sketches and the like. Perhaps that's what one might have thought, for nothing is burning, nothing is boiling over as Gert & Uwe Tobias already called their exhibition in the Kunstverein in Heilbronn.