Ralf Ziervogel

The announcement of this work will be potentially of no mean significance. It is to be expected that this artist's edition will provoke a similar stir to the one caused by snoeck's publication of Sigmar Polke's »Daphne«. In addition, both artists are connected, as though by an invisible bond, by the fact that, as with Polke's »Daphne«, their respective first artist's editions are in the form of a collection of xeroxed copies.\nRalf Ziervogel, born in 1975 in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, master student under Lothar Baumgarten in Berlin, has received many stipends (2003 and 2005 in New York), not to mention the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship. He has exhibited his works in galleries on a regular basis since 2001, taken part in international group exhibitions and is represented with works in the MoMA collection, the Deste Foundation Dakis Joannou in Athens and the Sammlung Olbricht in Essen.\nHis most spectacular graphic work entitled »Immobilie« [Immovable] from 2004 now forms the basis for the xeroxes in this unusual book, copied from a 6.65 x 3.50 metre original drawing in black ink with specialized scanner.\nUpon closer inspection the extent of the infernal misery permeating this drawing becomes immediately apparent. As soon as the viewer has recovered from the initial shock, his gaze wanders page by page through the book and its seemingly never-ending series. However, we are not dealing with a great narrative here in these both technically brilliant and unusual drawings, but rather with an infinite series which takes up the themes of Eros and Thanatos and alludes to motifs and effectuations by various other forerunners, such as a Aubrey Beardsley or an Hieronymus Bosch, an Egon Schiele or a Robert Crumb. Ralf Ziervogel captures them internally and technically and parades them in his comic and nonsense-like cosmos, having them rub their limbs up against one another, copulate or smash up the arm of a record player. His configurations arrest the eye and compel the viewer to find a resolution to this disaster, to this Comédie humaine.