Thomas Zipp
Born in Heppenheim, 1966
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Do you have 15 minutes?
I would like to talk with you for 5.
--Thomas Zipp
The paintings and installations of Thomas Zipp leave strange impressions. With his stubbornly maintained, clearly circumscribed areas of interest such as atomic fission, England or historical personalities, he could stand in the artistic tradition of individual mythologies. His investigations are directed towards stories, myths and utopias of modernism, which he converts into a present context. Functioning as means for creating distance to the historical references are humor and irony as well as cryptic messages from symbols which decline any pragmatic translation and lead to moments of oscillation between a historical tribute and visionary images. In this characteristic, gloomy opacity lies the power of attraction radiated by his art.
Zipp frequently composes his pictorial program as stagelike installations consisting of painting, sculptural objects, as well as drawings and the collages that are typical of modernism, whereby these last two as a rule function as constitutive components and transport hinting references. His overpowering panoramas with inhospitable landscapes and brooding horizons are liberatingly surreal. Their skies are often either settings for energetic cloud formations or figured graphic patterns, and they are sometimes abstract, checked backgrounds. Delicate indexings, lines, and heads with speech bubbles transfer the viewer to an extraterrestrial vantage-point; he is caught, so to speak, in the moment of flying towards our planet and our cultural history.
--Eveline Bernasconi
Born in Heppenheim, 1966
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Do you have 15 minutes?
I would like to talk with you for 5.
--Thomas Zipp
The paintings and installations of Thomas Zipp leave strange impressions. With his stubbornly maintained, clearly circumscribed areas of interest such as atomic fission, England or historical personalities, he could stand in the artistic tradition of individual mythologies. His investigations are directed towards stories, myths and utopias of modernism, which he converts into a present context. Functioning as means for creating distance to the historical references are humor and irony as well as cryptic messages from symbols which decline any pragmatic translation and lead to moments of oscillation between a historical tribute and visionary images. In this characteristic, gloomy opacity lies the power of attraction radiated by his art.
Zipp frequently composes his pictorial program as stagelike installations consisting of painting, sculptural objects, as well as drawings and the collages that are typical of modernism, whereby these last two as a rule function as constitutive components and transport hinting references. His overpowering panoramas with inhospitable landscapes and brooding horizons are liberatingly surreal. Their skies are often either settings for energetic cloud formations or figured graphic patterns, and they are sometimes abstract, checked backgrounds. Delicate indexings, lines, and heads with speech bubbles transfer the viewer to an extraterrestrial vantage-point; he is caught, so to speak, in the moment of flying towards our planet and our cultural history.
--Eveline Bernasconi
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