Galerie Kornfeld presents Auto-Splash, Martin Spengler’s first solo exhibition in Berlin, featuring sculptures and picture reliefs made of corrugated cardboard.
The title of the exhibition derives from the British physicist Arthur Mason Worthington, who for more than two decades sought the ideal form of a splashing drop, attaching great importance to the afterimages of his observations, which were, so to speak, burned onto his retina.
This notion that the image an object leaves behind in the viewer’s mind is much stronger than the actual moment of seeing also holds true, according to Martin Spengler, for any kind of art experience. The work is not the object, but that which develops between object and viewer. The more intense this image, the stronger its effect, which, however, cannot arise without the triggering object.
Martin Spengler finds the motifs for his works – contemporary cityscapes, skyscrapers, facades, towers and Gothic cathedrals – in image files and sketches that serve as models for detailed preliminary drawings. According to the artist, as soon as this “preliminary sketch” is completed, “the work is finished in the mind.” For him, the work of art is the “proof that it works,” produced from corrugated cardboard, glue and gesso (a chalky white paint) during a long creative process that may take weeks or months.
