Ralf Werner

Ralf Werner’s three-dimensional sculptures deal with elementary questions of perspective: The artist creates sculptural interventions based on the existing architecture found in situ, at each separate exhibition situation. Thus, individual characteristics of the space, from windows to walls to ceilings, are reconstructed from the ground up and then somehow shifted, reflected, reversed, or inverted. In this way the artist manages to fundamentally alter the situation, which can be described as materialized »movements of space«.

Besides his site-specific works for interiors and exteriors, including the »Pagoda« in Heidenheim, Ralf Werner has also produced a series of autonomous art works for walls and floors dealing with the theme of shifting perspectives.

Recently, Ralf Werner has been examining avantgarde architecture; for instance his group of sculptures,  »oskolok«, is based on the hexagonal windows of the famous studio built by Konstantin Melnikov in Moscow in 1927. In this, the artist has transformed the windows’ architectural form into geometrical, precise structures made of wood and glass, whose openings and reflections enter into a dialogue with the actual spatial situation. Moreover Ralf Werner realized a series of black-an-white prints under the title »brise-soleil«, which are based on historical architectural photographs. He has processed these pictures through a kind of perspectival faceting, as if one were looking at the building’s details through a kaleidoscope.

VITA
 

1969
born in Düsseldorf

1992-99
Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf, master student of Prof. Magdalena Jetelová

1995
Travel Grant, Academy for Fine Arts, Düsseldorf

1996-99
Academy Foundation of the German People

1997
Artist in Residence, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris

1999
Working Grant, Art Foundation Baden-Württemberg

2000
Working Grant, Fellowship North-Rhine Westfalia, Schloss Ringenberg

2001
German Study Center, Venice
Advancement Award for Fine Arts, City of Düsseldorf

2003
Advancement Award for Fine Arts, North-Rhine-Westfalia

since 2009
Professor for visual basics, Academy for Fine Arts, Saarbrücken

lives and works in Düsseldorf

SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

2018
VON HIER / NACH DORT, Busbahnhof Saarbrücken (permament installation)

2016
Fragment, Rasche Ripken, Berlin (with Christine Erhard)
Exiptaxie, Projektraum Bove, Düsseldorf

2015
Carte blanche, Kunstraum Düsseldorf (with Eva Berendes)
Oskolok, Galerie Sebastianskapelle, Ulm
Textum, Q18, Quartier am Hafen, Cologne (with Frank Weidenbach)

2011
Raum für vollendete Tatsachen, Düsseldorf (with Jonas Maas)

2006
gut garkau dazzle, ortart, Nuremberg (with Christine Erhard)

2004
Reichsabtei Kornelimünster (with Tatjana Doll)

2003
Raumskulpturen, Museum Schloss Hardenberg, Velbert

2002
Kunstverein Aichach

2001
loop, Galerie Stefan Rasche, Münster
Kunstraum Düsseldorf (with Aurelia Mihai)

2000
pop up, Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Neuenhaus

1999
Panorama, Kunstverein Gelsenkirchen
Galerie Thomas Taubert, Düsseldorf

1996
Ein anderer Raum, Kunstverein Eislingen

1994
Galerie Stefan Rasche, Münster

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

2022
DIE GROSSE 2022, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

2021
Zwischen Modell und Museum, Friedrich-Wolf-Theater, Eisenhüttenstadt

2019
d – polytop. Kunst aus Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

2018
Full House – 10 Jahre, Rasche Ripken, Berlin
DIE GROSSE 2018, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

2015
Neubau, Rasche Ripken, Berlin

2013
brise soleil, estemp, Sao Paulo
Landeskunstausstellung, Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken

2008
1:X (Raum/Modell), Rasche Ripken, Berlin
Paradoxien des Öffentlichen, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg

2007
maniera, Galerie Stefan Rasche, Münster
Werk 07, Bildhauersymposium, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim (permanent installation in public space)        

2006
façade, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam
form follows fiction, estemp, Düsseldorf
somewhere else, Kunstverein Göppingen

2002
Schwarzwaldhochstraße, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

2001
points of view, Künstlerhaus Dortmund
junger westen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen

2000
Stipendiaten 1999, Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg (touring exhibition)

1998
Tokyo-Düsseldorf, Kunstraum Düsseldorf
East International, Norwich Gallery
Düsseldorf Artists‘ Archive, High Street Project Gallery, Christchurch

1997
Klasse Jetelová, National University of Fine Arts, Tokyo