Die Mappe
Twins Gert & Uwe Tobias (°1973) have been working together since completing their artistic studies, in 2002.
Taking their references from European folklores, Modernism, Russian Constructivism, Art Brut and Comic Strips, they create works that skilfully blend abstraction and figuration, humour and the grotesque, geometric motifs and primitivism. The chromatic contrasts and repetition of these motifs invest their work with a strange and visually stimulating touch.
They have re-actualised an ancient technique, xylography (woodcuts), and used it to produce very large formats on paper with a surprising degree of technical complexity.
They also produce ceramics, collages, sculpture, typewriter drawings, gouaches and wall-paintings, which fill out their exhibitions by creating a world that is at once personal and complete.
Natives of Romania, they immigrated to Germany in the 1980s. Their work, however, is strongly marked by nostalgia for their native Transylvania, particularly for its myths and costumes. For the exhibition Die Mappe, they were inspired by a ‘patterns book’ of traditional embroidery that belonged to their family. Since their first ‘solo’ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 2007, Gert & Uwe Tobias have exhibited in numerous museums: Franz Gertsch Museum (Burgdorf), Kunsthalle Wien, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Pinacothèque Agnelli (Turin), as well as in galleries in New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Athens, Los Angeles … This exhibition is their second at the gallery.
