2021

photography, silicone, 95x72cm

Schaufenster Junge Kunst

Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen

03.04.21-11.07.21

→ O N L I N E E X H I B I T I O N

Curated by Madeleine Frey

In the exhibition Motion is Solution artist Thomas Lempertz explores how static elements can give rise to dynamics and power, combining image, object, performance, dance, sound and video to create a synthesis of the arts. The starting point is his theory that motion in the physical or psychological sense can have a cathartic effect. Motion can initiate a process of solution, untethering, perhaps even salvation. In order to bring about creative change, colloquially to “blow away the cobwebs”, to take one’s mind off things so as to find the time and leisure to take fresh heart and muster the strength to solve problems, to overcome obstacles, we need motion. The physical experience of standstill on the other hand is obstructive, for our inner processes and, as a result, just as much for our interaction with the outside world.As viewers, we are not left out. Instead, we can take part in the process of solution and untethering, with the exhibition invoking different senses and thus allowing us to literally feel with the exhibits. The various media on show in the exhibition invite us to reflect on our own perception. Silicone-covered photographs and a picture painted with silicone present a haptic experience that goes beyond mere viewing, enabling associations that combine seeing and feeling. Sculptures reassembled from used ballet barres from the old John Cranko School in Stuttgart to create an art object extend the image space into three dimensions. Their smell of sweat and wood testifies to the gruelling exercises that dancers underwent during their training. At the same time, they are possessed of a lightness which only consummate ballet can convey. The reassembled ballet barres, now objects of art, appear to defy gravity, gliding into a moment of weightlessness. The performance by ballet dancer Mackenzie Brown adds to this impression. In dance, the ambivalence of exertion and transcendence is dissolved, with objecthood segueing into a physical, living experience. The fluid sound that descends upon the whole scene acts as a kind of acoustic setting which the dancer moves around in and also creates. Conserved in a film, the exhibition becomes a video work, allowing visitors to experience the installation in physical space as well as in the digital realm.

Text: Madeleine Frey

2020

photography, silicone, 30x40cm

2022

Collaboration with Monica Menez

In his work “Herculine“ Thomas Lempertz uses hair as a performative material which gives him the possibility to change roles and identity. The first choreographed version is increasingly broken by the musical performance of Heidi Grandy and changes to a multi-layered experimental work.

2021

Galerie Kernweine

09.11.2019-11.02.2020

Curated by Oliver Kröning

2021

hi man, photography, 50x70cm

untitled (PupplayI), pointe shoes, 35x16x24cm

untitled (PupplayII), pointe shoes 30x17x30cm

hi man, acrylic, paper, silicone on wood, 50x70cm

2022

collage, silicone on wood, 50x70cm

Thomas Lempertz researches in his performance „Collective Skin“ his own body perception after extreme self-optimization and the striving for external ideal. The physical union with an extreme extended gender is like a ritual in which enslavement is addressed by the deformation of one's own body. The relationship between body and space must be rediscovered and explored with regard to proximity and demarcation. In doing so, the skin represents its own physical limitation and at the same time the beginning of sensory perception. The performance reveals the narrow degree of self-optimization, in which efforts to perfect the body can quickly turn into the opposite and become tyranny. In the accompanying sound of Heidi Grandy, the gallery space becomes the resonance space of human heartbeats, which are composed into different rhythms.

2022

handcut photography, silicone, 36x26,5x3cm

2021

glazed ceramics, 28x37x17cm