Joachim Bandau, born in Cologne, Germany in 1936, belongs to an esteemed and diverse group of German artists, which includes Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, and Imi Knoebel, who came out of the Kunstakademie DŸsseldorf in 1961. Bandau has had an uninterrupted schedule of major museum and gallery exhibitions throughout Europe dating back over forty-five years; his work is included in over thirty major Public Collections in Germany and Switzerland.
Read MoreGroundbreaking is his exploration of form; Bandau in the late 70′s moved the sculpture ground to underground. As with Carl Andres development of the floor sculpture, and Bruce Naumans concrete casting of the empty space under his chair, this new art form “Bodenskulptur”, Floor Sculpture, gave Bandau an independent and important legitimization. The first series of works following the automobiles exhibited in Documenta 6, 1977, were “Bunkers”, lead covers over wooden cores. The next stage were “Särge” (coffins), and “Mumienkästen” (boxes for mummies), continuing his referent to the human form, and condition.
Begun in 1983, his series of watercolors are created using a precise addition of transparent rectangles of gray wash over one another to create a unified black field that plays tricks with our depth of field. The layers give a sculptural element to the work that refer to his earlier practice. They also have an allusion to time- lapse photographs, with their black centres defying a sense of focus.
Text courtesy Two Rooms.
