Matthias Grotevent

all images © Tamara Lorenz

Matthias Grotevent is introduced by VITRINEN.

1980 born in Vreden/ Germany
1997 apprenticeship as goldsmith Engels, Ahaus, Germany
2002 Productdesign studies University of Applied science Düsseldorf, Germany and Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
2009 Fine Arts studiesArt academy Düsseldorf/ Germany
2014 Masterstudent of Prof. Richard Deacon

Emanating from sculpture, Matthias Grotevent’s many-layered work has been subject to a continual evolution exceeding the limits of various media and also integrates drawing, painting and language. A delight in technical experimentation, as well as a love of traditional sculptural work processes, has become a trademark of his work.    

As a result he has developed objects of clay, for example, the closed forms of which have been broken open or morphed through finger prints and other traces of the manual work processes, in point of fact, to “open up” creatural or natural structures. Ghostly, mask or even cadaver-like hollow forms arise. A kind of corporeality unfurls out of the surfaces, evoking the most various associations between figuration and abstraction, particularly when they are embedded in spatial structures, becoming part of a composition or even a narration. As with the ceramic objects, Grotevent develops his installative works from repetition and a gradual construction emerges from its relations into a three-dimensional structure whose point of origin often can be sourced in the second dimension.  In the light of this, it is no great wonder the artist risks excursions into the surface. His sculptural “panel paintings” as with his paintings of oil on canvas, reveal motifs constructed via displacements, deep cuts and openings which are simultaneously deconstructed thus engendering the interplay of the spatial and the form even to the extent of making the invisible – visible. Both at the level of content, via the poetic title or the occasionally extension of integrated text elements and with a view to their formal aspects, Grotevent’s works maintain a balance between sensual “rapture”, reduction and lightness.

For his first solo exhibition “Metut” in the VITRINEN in Cologne, Matthias Grotevent has developed a series of self-portraits of clay. The quirky head-sized objects have their counterpart on the other side of the city in a small salesroom in Nippes, a temporary exhibition space acting as a satellite of VITRINEN.