Michael Kalmbach- Kinderzimmer




Michael Kalmbach, installation view, Wohnmaschine, 2007


 

November 9-December 22, 2007

 

 

We are pleased to announce the second solo exhibition at Wohnmaschine by Michael Kalmbach (b. 1962).

 

The “nursery” through which the artist takes us in this exhibition is a surreal world of childhood. Furnished with wooden furniture on a child’s scale, sculptures, paintings, and objects that could decorate any child’s room, the exhibition space becomes a child’s room with visual motifs that at first glance seem typically childlike.

 

Kalmbach discreetly thwarts this first impression of a “beautiful, ideal world,” however, by means of tiny sideswipes and impertinent touches. For example, the wallpaper he designed and his watercolor depict, on closer inspection, subject matter that is not always suitable for children.

 

These perplexing elements are all the more effective thanks to Kalmbach’s meticulously arranged picture-book world superficially appears to imitate a space protected against an offensive and unrelenting adult world. The mise-en-scène suddenly loses its innocence and cause the viewer to oscillate between believing and perceiving.

 

In his watercolors, sculptures, and book illustrations Michael Kalmbach repeatedly address, on a humorous, sarcastic level, the theme of “being a child in our society” and of interpersonal relationships. The ambiguity inherent in the images points to a painful side of childhood and to the sometimes hypocritical way adults deal with children.

 

For his solo exhibition at Wohnmaschine the artist uses the space to transform his visual narratives into a three-dimensional room for maneuver and to create a walk-in world for grown-up children.