Thomas Gänszler

The motifs and materials of the sculptures and objects by Thomas Gänszler are often taken from everyday functional life, such as wood, cardboard, rock wool, metal, or plastics. However, through fragmentation and reworking, these are translated into the artist’s characteristic formal language and leave the viewer in the dark about the former function or its formal origin.

The sculptures combine the ambiguity in the material or a tendency towards fragmentation. Thomas Gänszler often draws his repertoire of forms as well as his thematic contexts from his found footage archive, in which he transforms the photographic documentation of destroyed everyday objects into three-dimensionality. With his sculptural work, the former student of the master class Erwin Wurm places himself in the tradition of an expanded concept of sculpture, both in terms of materials and thematic possibilities, as well as in a reflective and objective view of the immanent history of sculpture in the current and historical context.

His spray work on paper or wood also always discusses the space and work with the duality of photography and painting. In the real sense, the picture compositions are abstract, but the artist places light and dark surfaces next to each other in such a way that the impression of landscape or of glimpses into modern architecture is created. The focus is on playing with fictional and real realities. In an examination of Anthony Vidler’s 1992 work “Architectural Uncanny”, which documents contemporary architecture as a metaphor for the psychological and physical experience of architecture, Thomas Gänszler designs rooms in which the uncanny and unsettling are addressed and once again poses the question of reality and its reality Construction.

(Silvie Aigner)