We are presenting a series of new works by the young German artist Stefan Thiel (*1965 in Berlin) at our showroom on Rämistrasse 35, simultaneously with the exhibition of Glen Rubsamen. Stefan Thiel lives and works in Berlin.
Stefan Thiel has made quite an impact with his encyclopaedic work The 120 Days of Sodom or The School of Debauchery, 1994-98, in which he literally transcribes the works of Marquis de Sade into braille. In his new works Thiel again uses a binary system: he transfers photographs (increasingly his own) into silhouettes. The harsh black and white contrasts in his pictures lead to an intensified precision as well as to an aestheticism of the portrayed. Hereby their symbolic quality becomes apparent, yet again is infiltrated by Thiel’s choice of objects. He shows us everyday situations, details of the countryside and citylife as well as single objects. Though sceneries may be populated, no relationships of a narrative nature are formed.
On the contrary, his Cut-Outs serve the purpose of illustrating facts in a documentary and distance creating way. The large-scale silhouettes are often square and base on a module of 50 by 50 centimeters. Although they do work well as single pictures and their black framings emphasize the graphic unity of each picture, the reference to the new series in progress is there. Stefan Thiel captures the flood of images in our everyday life with the aid of the intricate silhouette. We may assume that Thiel’s new work will equally reach encyclopaedic proportions. [Iris Wien]