Lars Fischedick
(born 1968)
Biography
Lars has spent the last 25 years in the examination of 3 dimensional spaces: This has been achieved through architecture, model building, sculpture and installations.
Lars was born in Germany and worked in Contemporary Architecture and collaborated in various Exhibitions including Christo and Jean-Claude’s Wrapped Reichstag Project for Berlin; one of contemporary arts most innovative projects in the mid 90’s.
The artist moved to Cape Town in 2002 and since 2010 Lars has moved away from the architectural. By combining his knowledge of materials such as wood and resin with perceptual shifts from aerials to perspectives he has formed a new artistic narrative. A major influence in Lars’s current work is his studies in mathematics and projective geometry, particularly explorations from the personal inner perspective to the geometrical infinite. Through his work, Lars gives his audience an experience of space, challenges their perceptual boundaries, and makes invisible aspects of this experience, visible. In his own words;
It is both logical and playful, mathematical and infinite.
Lars draws upon inspiration from the artists Kandinsky, Mondrian, Le Corbusier, Dali, Rietveld and the architectural experimentalists like the Russian Deconstructivists. The Haus-Rucker-Co and current architects like Liebeskind and Gehry are considered by the artist to be his artistic ancestors and companions. Tenguely, Beuys, Serra and Christo were concerned with ‘bending’ the space in and around us and have provided Lars with contemporary references. Comparisons can be made with South African greats; Cecil Skotnes, Lucky Sibaya, Albert Newell – all experimentalists in the use of 3 dimensional space.
The discovery of anything new changes our perception and the way we see and experience the world we live in. Why did the aboriginal people on the continent of America not see the ships of Columbus rising on the horizon? It was apparently not within their reality. So, if I stand in a closed up old barn and I can see through the gaps of the planks the outside light, but not the rays streaming in. Only the moment I kick some dust up do the rays become visible right in front of me. This does not mean that those rays didn’t exist the moment I entered the barn. It became part of my reality the moment I kicked the dust.
My art is about kicking up that dust
Artist Statement
I use various size formats in wood, resin, metals and acrylic with fine attention to detail and technical precision through cutting, carving, painting and casting. Some of my pieces are planned, using my technical experience to work with exact measurements and calculations in the construction process. Other pieces are process-oriented: an exploration of the material and the dynamic tension between different materials, textures, reflections and the energetic field. Abstract and shifting perspectives: from the inner workings of the human cell to detailed aerials of Berlin and New York.
In a world where people are living a majority of their waking hours in an illusionary two-dimensional existence through computer screens and television, my work challenges one to extend one’s perceptual comfort zone. I am exploring the meeting between reality and illusion. The movement from the surface into the 3 dimensional space and further: pushing the boundaries within my own perception and those of my audience. The third, fourth and maybe fifth and sixth dimensional space around and within us.
I believe there is another ‘reality’ around us which we don’t know about, the unproved that reveals itself through projective Geometry: forms that simply emerge within composed and organized lines. Making things visible where there is no mathematical or scientific proof
© Lars Fischedick