Mathias Hornung: Defragmentology

Anna Laudel Düsseldorf showcases Defragmentology by the German artist Mathias Hornung between January 23–March 7, 2020. Hornung’s works dissolve the boundary between graphics and sculpture. They are sensual and at the same time conceptual images that play with the space and interspace between media and materials. They are based on rectangular grids printed either on paper or three-dimensionally on wood. Topography as well as time and space play an important role in his works, but the ultimate idea behind his works is the break from the perfect, even and regular web of life.

In Mathias Hornung’s woodblock prints, past, present, and future enter into an idiosyncratic, oscillating relationship. Seemingly incompatible elements combine to form new spaces of thought and vision that create and carry out ambivalences. In his new series “Defragmentology”, which collects colored woodcuts under the title “Digitalmelt,” he draws a bow from the woodcut into the digital world and situates his images thematically and structurally in the confusing present: his media survey is thus at the same time a kind of ancestor research that questions the multilayered, also incalculable dimensions of dealing with information in an irritating way. Wood, paper and computers mark different epochs, which reciprocally expand into new possibilities, commonalities and points of view, each illuminating itself anew. Wooden prints can also be more than a reminiscence of the past. 

Hornung’s group of works “Defragmentology” places an old technique in a fruitful relationship to our media present. In a world of ever more perfect technical images, the medial flood of images, he links their codes with the old process of high pressure with his direct manual access to sensual immediacy, to corporeality and haptics. He lives and works in Berlin and his works were exhibited internationally in Canada, South Africa and Austria. 

Mathias Hornung’s solo show Defragmentology will be on display at Anna Laudel Düsseldorf until March 7, 2020.

Content of this text is taken from Mathias Hornung’s catalogue, written by Dr. Dorothée Bauerle-Willert.

About Anna Laudel
Founded by Anna Laudel with the aim of supporting the work of Turkish and international artists, the gallery is dedicated to support artists by providing a prominent contemporary exhibition platform and by developing a greater understanding of contemporary art. 

Following its first location in Istanbul’s old finance district of the late Ottoman Empire in Karaköy, Anna Laudel opened its second gallery in a historic building in Düsseldorf, Germany to expand more internationally. Directed by Ferhat Yeter, both galleries host solo and group exhibitions by artists from Turkey and beyond and represent artists at an international level by showcasing their latest projects at leading international art fairs. To follow the exhibition and art fair calendar of Anna Laudel please check out annalaudel.gallery.

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