THOMAS
SOMMER

08.03. - 19.04.08

»ARCHIV C1-C14«

We cordially invite you and your friends to the opening reception on Saturday, March 8, 2008 starting at 11am.

What we first see in Thomas Sommer's work are some barely there ephemera: scraps of this and that, small pieces of paper or wire, informal scribbles right next to well articulated drawings. These elements, whether abstract or realistic, find themselves combined in wooden cases that suggest strange interpretations of familiar settings.

Each case enacts a different scenario that form a collection of 14 works called, quite rationally, C1 - C14, after the numerical sequence of the cases. In each work we find a confluence of divergent streams of thoughts, images, gestures and materials that the artist brings together in diverse and ingenious combinations. In this body of work two unrelated historical paradigms appear to converge, firstly bricolage, a process related to how Sommer transforms materials and information, and to the cabinet of curiosities, the Wunderkabinett, which he recalls in the cases he creates, new contexts for his reconstituted visual content. (...)

Renée van Halm