Andreas Kocks: PLACES

Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York, is pleased to announce PLACES, its fourth solo exhibition with German artist Andreas Kocks. In PLACES, Kocks expresses motion and spontaneity through meticulously cut and crafted paper sculptures.

Kocks utilizes a limited palette of black and white paper, graphite, aluminum, and gold leaf. These frenetic forms evoke the very essence of creating art: the act of mark-making. He cuts thick sheets of paper to create elegantly textured, layered pieces that give the illusion of three-dimensional gestures in space. The energy expressed in the loops, circles, and drips in these sculptures belie the precision required to craft them.

This series is an aside from his ongoing site-specific commissions and projects in that they reference general spaces such as clouds, passages, ports, or fields. Instead of acting as realistic illustrations, these abstracted forms convey the potential energy of a place, thereby serving as an associative reminder for the viewer. These smaller, intimate figures maintain the same energy as his previous larger figures, containing dynamic graphic elements that expand even beyond the border of the frame.

The exhibited selection of pieces reflects Kocks’s feeling that there is increasingly less nuance in the world. In his words, there are now fewer "in-betweens" in the social and political spheres. Places explores extremes: the works are either light, fragile, and airy, or dense, dark, and complex. However, there is a balance between a yearning for harmony and a sense of insecurity here that continues to captivate viewers.

Andreas Kocks was born in Oberhausen, Germany in 1960. He received his BA and MFA at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 2006, he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. His work has been exhibited in dozens of exhibitions both domestically and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Art and Design, New York, Manchester Museum, Manchester, UK, SF MoMA, San Francisco, California, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, SCAD, Savannah, Georgia, the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, New Jersey, Centre d’Art, Campredon, France, and SeaCity Museum, Southampton, England.

His work is held in the collections of institutions including Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany, Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen, Germany, Bayrische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany, Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, Michigan, and several state art collections in Germany. His work has been featured in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Art News, Architectural Digest, Kunstforum, Architektur & Wohnen, Time Out New York, and other publications.