ROBERT ELFGEN

Robert Elfgen’s technically innovative bricolage-art is of course not devoid of art-historical reference. His associative treatment of objets trouvés recalls Marcel Duchamp; his strict conceptual logic is reminiscent of Rosemarie Trockel, who taught his masterclass. And clear allusions to the Romantic pictorial language of painters such as William Turner or Caspar David Friedrich, along with traces of a laconicism coming from Surrealism and Pop Art can be identified in the works brought together for this exhibition. But with his artisanal investigations, Elfgen achieves something attained by only a few artists—the creation of an utterly personal, unique cosmos. A cosmos that opens up a series of spaces of biographical, phenomenological, and psychoanalytical interpretation. A cosmos in which nature and civilisation merge into each other, and which enables the viewer to see the world in a new and subtle manner.

Robert Elfgen (*1972, Wesseling, Germany) lives and works in Cologne and Berlin. Elfgen first studied with John Armleder at the Akademie der Künste Braunschweig before switching to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf as a master pupil of Rosemarie Trockel. He was awarded the Atelierstipendium, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Imhoff-Stiftung, Cologne (2004); the Förderpreis des Landes NRW für junge Künstlerinnen und Künstler (2007); and the Grafikpreis des Landes NRW (2009). Important solo exhibitions were Strandspaziergang, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Dueren (2016); Hören was zu sehen, Oldenburger Kunstverein (2015); des bien ich, Sprüth Magers Cologne (2008); expedition, westlondonprojects, London (2006); and 1+1=3 Elfgen-Technik, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2005). Relevant group exhibitions were Berlin Edition, Museum of Now (2019), Spargelmatinee, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2017); Paperworlds., me Collectors Room Berlin (2014); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2013—2014); Plaisirs du Jardin, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2012); and Paul Thek—Werkschau im Kontext zeitgenössischer Kunst, ZKM Karlsruhe and Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg (2007‒-2008).

Courtesy Sprüth Magers