Michael Sailstorfer
T 72
28.11. 2010 – 09.01.2011

Most recently, the sculptor Michael Sailstorfer attracted attention with the installation Clouds on the occasion of the reopening of the K20 in Düsseldorf, in which he hung the ceiling of the exhibition hall with clouds made of truck hoses and the Pulheim digs campaign. The artist buried gold bars worth 10,000 EUR on a vacant lot and then sowed yellow mustard. After the plants had grown and the traces of the digging had disappeared, Michael Sailstorfer invited everyone to join in the gold search at a press conference.
The artist processes impressions from his surroundings in his works. He himself describes his work: “First of all, I am an observer. The reference point of my work is the world. More precisely, how one finds one’s way in it.” The artist comes from a small town in Bavaria. One of his first major projects developed accordingly from an observation he made at bus stops in the countryside. While bus stops in cities are usually impersonal structures made of glass and steel, their appearance on country roads is more like small houses or garden sheds. The homely appearance of these stations contrasts with the impersonal function of the transit location. The artist redesigned some of the houses to address this area of ​​tension. He furnished them with simple furniture, as if they were not an anonymous waiting area, but the living or sleeping quarters of certain people.
Time is not a highway is the title of another work for which the artist constructed a machine that presses a truck tire against the wall and lets it rotate. The smell of worn-out rubber spreads through the room, and the abrasion collects beneath the tire. In this work, too, Michael Sailstorfer works with the opposite pair of movement and standstill. Because even though the tire is constantly rotating, it does not move from the spot. Time does not pass by without leaving a trace, and the wear and tear of the rubber is clearly noticeable.
Another similarity becomes clear when looking at the two works: the use of everyday objects. These are taken out of their context and combined in new ways. Through these interventions, the formal aesthetics of the underlying objects are supplemented with a narrative moment. In his absurd-poetic works, his artistic origins in minimal and conceptual art are clearly evident.

Michael Sailstorfer was born in 1979 in Velden (Vils). He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Prof. Olaf Metzel. He lives and works in Berlin.

Curated by Jürgen Wesseler.