The dark side of the creature illuminates Horst Sakulowski (left) and Kay Voigtmann with their refined works in the foyer of the Stadttheater Fürth. © Photo: Hans-Joachim Winckler

FÜRTH - "What do you believe?" This is a question that even Gretchen from Heinrich Faust could not answer. In the Stadttheater the request to the verbal oath of disclosure is now used as the title for a show with works by Horst Sakulowski and Kay Voigtmann. The exhibition organised by Art-Agency Hammond is reluctant to provide an answer. Instead, there are many new questions. Which in this case is decidedly better.

No one can accuse Horst Sakulowski of being trendy or even fashionable. The 73-year-old has brought with him graphite drawings to Fürth, and in doing so he reveals a mastery that is great and a trace confusing. His works, which are now exhibited in the foyer and in the upper circle of the Stadttheater, seem to come at the very first glance from another period. An impression that is quickly relativised. The analytical sharpness with which Sakulowski captures his objects is rooted entirely in the here and now.

The man, who comes from the Thuringian Saalfeld and lives in Weida, has a broad range: people and life. So the whole lot. His portraits are realistic and  unmasking  that the viewer feels a slight discomfort, because he inevitably has to handel his Modell like a surgeon.

Sakulowski studied in Leipzig at the Academy of Graphics and Book Art. In 1973, he attracted attention with his "portrait after duty", showing a woman who has obviously fallen asleep completely exhausted. No heroine of work and much less an example in the image world of the real existing GDR socialism. Sakulowski has always taken the freedom to show what he sees.

Finest craftsmanship

In direct neighborhood in the foyer are works by Kay Voigtmann  joined to the current show. The 48-year-old was born in Zeulenroda and lives in Gera, he studied like Sakulowski at the university of Leipzig. Bevor that, Voigtmann had to complete an unloved fine mechanics apprenticeship. Stayed, it seems, is his unmistakable sense for finest craftsmanship. His small-format works, currently being shown in Fürth, condense details in lavish diversity in a small format. Who takes part wants to have a magnifying glass on hand soon, in fear to overlook something.
 

Voigtmann is on the trail of a whole new species. The beings who act in his drawings seem as futile as the accidental appearances of a inkblot test. But their deformity deludes, and quite natural they work as a biped with hands and feet.
 

Really disturbing is the fact that they are easily recognisable because they reveal that they are human beings in all their craziness. Obviously, this is based on a certain degree of wittiness. But that seems not funny to me.

A love for Ironic perspective: Tessa Wolkersdorfer and Wolf Sakowski next to his painting „Venedig“ in the Foyer at the Stadttheater. © Photo: Hans-Joachim Winckler

Two artists, thirty-four artworks. One showcases in the right wing and one in the left wing of the foyer. Why are we actually automatically looking for a common denominator? Those that hope to find something unifying between the two artists, the chances are good.

You don't have to be very clever to attest Tessa Wolkersdorfer and Wolf Sakowski a love for ironic perspective. Both have in common the witty handling of allusions, quotations and props.

Sakowski, who lives and works in Nuremberg, is a master in the reduction of ideas until just the quintessence of the original idea remains. This type of homeopathic Visual Design produces artworks like "Terra Incognita". Here the white space dominates. What seems logical. How can one depict what no one knows?  The messages of "Adam and Eve (Vogue)" and "Adam and Eve (Elle)" are also reduced. An apple appears as a female element on the one plant. On the other flaunts a potato. This fits - and is at first glance scarcely less striking than the picture of the world, that glossy magazines love to present.

The 65-year-old brings his original work on the canvas with oil and acrylic.  He understands how to mix wit with a great aesthetic appeal. Something incredibly calming goes out of the bright shade of blue, which occupies almost the entire area of the 1.20 to 2.10 square meters of his largest painting.

The seven letters: Venedig are the only disturbance. This word sparks an explosion of pictures in our mind. After imaginary gondolas, masks, canals and facades have passed by one looks at the bottom right corner of the painting. There languishes a goldfish in overturned glass without water. Hard luck!

Tessa Wolkersdorfer combines what at first glance does not seem to harmonise: Furniture and natural phenomena. Their fusion of indoors and outdoors combines frankly dresser or bed with designs that you have already seen as a living room wallpaper. A sense of freedom and independence resonates in this strange line up, because there is no conformism, there is no pressure. The objects lacking any traction with its imaginary environment, all hovers in the dark and is unpassable in more dimensions and uncountable.

Wolkersdorfer who was born in 1982 in Nuremberg, and was a master student of Peter Angermann at the Art Academy, gives the viewer with her multi step confusion the chance to immerse in a world that apparently is just beginning to make its own rules. "Outside home" has she titled one of her series of artworks, which is more than fine irony. The concatenated word combinations sound like the sort of advertising slogan that tries to camouflage what is without truth and sense.

She makes her revelation to liberation. If in fact everything so simply can be paired, then actually everyone can do as he wishes. The key lies perhaps in the dresser, on which Tessa Wolkersdorfer has placed the red rubber boots („Draußendaheim Stiefel und Haube“).

The "illusions" that she and Sakowski have brought to the Stadttheater, are likely to cause a considerable visual pleasure anyway.