CHOI&LAGER Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition by Andreas Blank in Cologne, Germany.

At first glance, Andreas Blank’s objects seem like rather ordinary everyday objects: a box, a jam jar, a pair of rubber boots, and a wine bottle. At closer inspection, however, we realise that every single object, be it marble, alabaster or sandstone, has been carved by hand. Blank collected the distinctly colored stones from quarries worldwide.

Blank plays tricks with our expectations and perceptions. By treating everyday objects in a traditional and precise manner, he provides the mundane with a monumental status. A white sheet of A4 paper, crumpled in a black frame, modestly occupies a spot on one of the exhibition walls. Upon closer inspection we realise that it is actually carved from white marble and black basalt. From a distance, this work could be viewed as a pun on modernist nihilism, however, up close it reveals a material sensibility that goes beyond a simple juxtaposition of abstraction and reality.

Andreas Blank was born in Ansbach in 1976. He attended the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and was Meisterschüler under Prof. Klingelhöller. He held a scholarship with the German National Academic Foundation and received his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. In 2009 he was a finalist for the New Sensations Award by Channel 4 and the Saatchi Gallery. Blank lives and works in Ansbach, London and Berlin.