Texts & Press

Thomas Wachholz and David Renggli
Cha Cha Cha
Gallery exchange with WENTRUP, Berlin
June 30 – July 31, 2021
Matchboxes are a dying relic from a time when smoking in public and especially in cafes, restaurants, and bars was still unrestricted and consequently much more widespread than it is today.

The ephemeral matchbox very quickly developed into a form of free souvenir that, charged with individual memory, still connects the owner years later with the personal visit experience coupled to space and time. Over the decades, a discipline related to the collection of matchboxes developed in the form of phillumeny.

This background opens up both a starting point and a frame of reference for the series of works on view at Nino Mier Gallery in which Thomas Wachholz deals with the cultural artifact of the matchbox on both a conceptual and painterly level.

In the early phase of the series, the artist focused primarily on participatory and processual elements. For several years, however, painting itself has become increasingly important. Starting from his matchbox collection, the artist deals with the found pictorial and color worlds as well as their compositions. In doing so, he develops them further to a point where they become independent of the original designs and turn into independent painterly subjects. A new, abstract repertoire of colors and forms emerges in the process, which the artist repeatedly samples and condenses into new compositions.

The artist breaks down the motif of the matchbox into its essential components:
A square or transverse rectangular shape (the box), a motif on it (the label), and a monochromatic – occasionally honeycomb or diamond-patterned – russet bar (the striker). Only through the functional striker does the overall composition become a universal matchbox form that is recognizable to the viewer. Over the years, the striker has detached itself from the block-like design feature located next to the motif in order to mix with the pictorial elements in the new works and take on its own geometric-abstract forms. In doing so, over time, they have become increasingly detached from any mimetic moments and function merely as "echoes of modernist abstraction" (Wachholz). Nevertheless, the artist continues with 'classical' matchbox-like paintings as well. Since 2020, the paintings now feature matches themselves. Similarly, as previously described for the boxes, the artist has reduced them to their essential graphic components: white lines end at one end with an oval colored dot and thus become immediately recognizable as an image of a match. In the motivic repetition in some of the paintings themselves, they recall a box opened upside down, its matches scattered on the floor. The striker breaks away from its original blocky shape and transforms into a square net that seems to float above the canvas.

The appropriation and reinterpretation of everyday and art-historically traditional visual languages can also be found in David Renggli's work.

His series of the Desire Paintings are already a priori inscribed with a poetic and humorous dimension by their location of the word 'desire' in the title. These are medium to large format paintings of silhouette-like silhouettes and geometric forms on wood, framed in an object frame and covered on their upper edge with a coarse-meshed jute net. The fibrous jute fabric is also painted, which results in an overlapping of the motifs on different image planes. The spacing of these and the transparency of the coarse-meshed jute netting create an interesting optical effect as soon as the viewer moves in front of the work. The artist detaches himself from the usually assumed relatively static way of looking at a painting and a processual moment is inscribed in it with the reception. Depending on the viewing angle, new visual experiences arise for the work. The artist thus dissolves the modernist dictum of the ideal (frontal) viewer location since both levels shift spatially against each other. The overlapping of the motifs creates new images and color effects. Renggli employs the aesthetics of decorative design and craftsmanship, which he fuses with references to geometric abstraction. In doing so, he challenges the tradition and authority of abstract painting, which was adopted very early into the decorative canon of interior design. The usually two-dimensional layout of a painting is extended by another plane, resulting in an impression reminiscent of a hybrid between painting and relief. In addition, the coarse-meshed jute fabric acts like a kind of burning glass, seeming to dissolve the color that supports it like a grid while at the same time revealing a view of the colored forms beneath.

In a figurative sense, Renggli's works make use of the most diverse clichés of longing. His motifs spring from common stereotypes of (art) fantasies, notions of the idyllic and (tourist) places of longing. He breaks them up into their individual parts, reassembles them to let new, abstract images of aspiration emerge in the spaces thus created.

The hanging of Wachholz and Renggli's double exhibition defies the standards usually found in galleries and museums. Instead of hanging the individual works next to each other on an imaginary line through the center of the picture, thus ensuring the best possible neutrality for the single work and thus optimal conditions for viewing, the works are distributed on the walls at different heights. In this way, the presentation is more reminiscent of a Petersburg hanging. It thus plays with conventions on the level of presentation as well, evoking a playful lightness that is equally inherent to both artists.

-  Text courtesy of WENTRUP, Berlin

Thomas Wachholz (b. 1984 in Cologne) presents his third solo exhibition one, two, three with Ruttkowski;68 in Bochum.

His practice revolves around the matchstick and its box as medium and motif, exploring repetition, rhythmic sequences, and the dynamics of relationships. Through overlays, fragments, and oversized forms, he creates sculptural compositions that reframe perception and human connections.

Beginning with the simple trick of two matches burning together like a kiss, Wachholz translates this ephemeral image into bronze. Surface traces, edges, and irregularities become markers of industrial culture, yet his works retain a poetic lightness. The weight of the material seems to dissolve into the density of his compositions, whose parts extend into space like drawings transformed into objects.

His sculptures appear like puzzles that resist a final resolution, shifting into new constellations as viewers move around them. They recall a musical rhythm, in which repetitions and variations function like jazz riffs. In their formal and conceptual structure, the works enter into dialogue with artists such as Joseph Kosuth and Joel Shapiro. Through this interplay of materiality and idea, Wachholz creates an antithesis to reality, a field where heaviness and tenderness, structure and playfulness, coexist in a delicate balance.

Text: Philipp Fernandes do Brito

David Renggli & Thomas Wachholz
Let’s G et L it
Exhibition: 6 November 2021 – 7 January 2022
Opening: 6 November 2021, 11-6 pm
“Let’s Get Lit” is the second part of the double exhibition of new works by David Renggli (*1974, lives in Zurich) and Thomas Wachholz (*1984, lives in Cologne), organized in collaboration with Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles.

David Renggli’s series of the Desire Paintings are already a priori inscribed with a poetic and humorous dimension by their location of the word 'desire' in the title. These are medium to large format paintings of silhouette-like silhouettes and geometric forms on wood, framed in an object frame and covered on their upper edge with a coarse-meshed jute net. The fibrous jute fabric is also painted, which results in an overlapping of the motifs on different image planes. The spacing of these and the transparency of the coarse-meshed jute netting create an interesting optical effect as soon as the viewer moves in front of the work. The artist detaches himself from the usually assumed relatively static way of looking at a painting and a processual moment is inscribed in it with the reception. Depending on the viewing angle, new visual experiences arise for the work. The artist thus dissolves the modernist dictum of the ideal (frontal) viewer location since both levels shift spatially against each other. The overlapping of the motifs creates new images and color effects. Renggli employs the aesthetics of decorative design and craftsmanship, which he fuses with references to geometric abstraction. In doing so, he challenges the tradition and authority of abstract painting, which was adopted very early into the decorative canon of interior design. The usually two-dimensional layout of a painting is extended by another plane, resulting in an impression reminiscent of a hybrid between painting and relief. In addition, the coarse-meshed jute fabric acts like a kind of burning glass, seeming to dissolve the color that supports it like a grid while at the same time revealing a view of the colored forms beneath. In a figurative sense, Renggli’s works make use of the most diverse clichés of longing. His motifs spring from common stereotypes of (art) fantasies, notions of the idyllic and (tourist) places of longing. He breaks them up into their individual parts, reassembles them to let new, abstract images of aspiration emerge in the spaces thus created.

The appropriation and reinterpretation of everyday and art-historically traditional visual languages can also be found in Thomas Wachholz’s work.

Matchboxes are a dying relic from a time when smoking in public and especially in cafes, restaurants, and bars was still unrestricted and consequently much more widespread than it is today.

The ephemeral matchbox very quickly developed into a form of free souvenir that, charged with individual memory, still connects the owner years later with the personal visit experience coupled to space and time. Over the decades, a discipline related to the collection of matchboxes developed in the form of phillumeny.

This background opens up both a starting point and a frame of reference for the series of works on view in which Thomas Wachholz deals with the cultural artifact of the matchbox on both a conceptual and painterly level.

In the early phase of the series, the artist focused primarily on participatory and processual elements. For several years, however, painting itself has become increasingly important. Starting from his matchbox collection, the artist deals with the found pictorial and color worlds as well as their compositions. In doing so, he develops them further to a point where they become independent of the original designs and turn into independent painterly subjects. A new, abstract repertoire of colors and forms emerges in the process, which the artist repeatedly samples and condenses into new compositions.

The artist breaks down the motif of the matchbox into its essential components: A square or transverse rectangular shape (the box), a motif on it (the label), and a monochromatic – occasionally honeycomb or diamond-patterned – russet bar (the striker). Only through the functional striker does the overall composition become a universal matchbox form that is recognizable to the viewer. Over the years, the striker has detached itself from the block-like design feature located next to the motif in order to mix with the pictorial elements in the new works and take on its own geometric-abstract forms. In doing so, over time, they have become increasingly detached from any mimetic moments and function merely as “echoes of modernist abstraction” (Wachholz). Nevertheless, the artist continues with ‘classical’ matchbox-like paintings as well.

Since 2020, the paintings now feature matches themselves. Similarly, as previously described for the boxes, the artist has reduced them to their essential graphic components: white lines end at one end with an oval, colored dot and thus become immediately recognizable as an image of a match. In the motivic repetition in some of the paintings themselves, they recall a box opened upside down, its matches scattered on the floor. The striker breaks away from its original blocky shape and transforms into a square net that seems to float above the canvas.

An einer Hausecke eingelassen in eine Fassade aus Rauputz und verklinkertem Fundament, deren gebaute Schlichtheit sich seit den 1970er Jahren zahlreich in der Gewohnheit vieler Deutscher Kleinstädte entdecken ließe, findet sich unverhofft und zurückgenommen ein Raum. Unscheinbar wie der Alltag einer uns vertrauten Welt, gelegen zwischen Wirtschaftswunder, dem trist-anthraziten Grau gutbürgerlicher Wohnbauten im Deutschen Herbst sowie den revolutionären Denk- und Formansätzen ehemaliger ästhetischer Aufbruchsstimmungen einer vergangenen Zeit, gliedert er sich als Ladenlokal in seiner Nüchternheit zurückhaltend in das Bild der Hausfassade. Nichts außer seiner präsenten Architektur als Warenladen zeugt direkt von seiner ehemaligen Funktionoder seinem Gebrauch. Nichts außer seinem Schaufenster von den Spuren, die nach seiner langjährigen Nutzung als Bäckerei die Warenwelt hinterlassen hat und ihn so implizit zum augenblicklichen Erinnerungsobjekt in den Gedanken vieler seiner Passanten machte. Wie die Streichholzschachteln, welche als Relikte eben jener skizzierten Warenwelt die Basis von Thomas Wachholz malerischen Arbeiten bilden, lädt auch der beschriebene Raum des Kunstverein Heppenheims mit seinem funktionalen Charakter ein, seine Strukturen weiter zu denken.

Ausgangspunkt der gezeigten Malereien, deren Streifen sich auch installativ wie die farbige Banderole einer Verpackung auf die Außenfenster des Kunstvereins ausdehnen, ist dabei eine auf Streichholzschateln gefundene Motivvielfalt, deren komplexe Assoziations- und Verweisstrukturen eine bisher verborgene Bildwelt eröffnen. Hier sind es in der Fülle der gefundenen Kompositionen die Flächen, Formen, Muster, Label und typographischen Layouts, die durch ihre Anbringung auf Schachteln als Gegenstände des Alltags – mitnehmbar in Hotels, Kinos und Restaurants sowie in Geschäften – für Wachholz die Möglichkeit beinhalten, ihre Komposition frei zu abstrahieren. Der Raum des Kunstvereins Heppenheim wird dabei mit CAPRI zum Sehnsuchtsort – aufgeladen mit den Erinnerungen an kollektive Urlaubsvorstellungen einer heilen Welt, die Marktstände einer immer mehr schwindenden Warenkultur zurückliegender Dekaden und die soziologisch-ikonische Bedeutung des sprichwörtliche Kindereis auf die Hand.

Übertragen auf die Leinwand wie die rosa, weißen oder auch bordeauxroten Streifen mit ihren Assoziationen an Fahnen und Markisen oder auch bunt-wulstige Bauformen architektonischer Utopien, bilden die Sujets der Schachteln eine eigene, vom Objekt unabhängige Narration. Bildlich aktiviert durch unsere Emotionen und Gedanken wie die Balken der Striker, die als Reibfläche auf den ursprünglich funktionalen Zusammenhang im Layout der Schachtel verweisen, verlagern ihre Streifen dabei den Fokus auf die gemalte Bildfläche. Auf ihr werden die Motive in Wachholz Werken übergroß, verlängern sich, dehnen sich aus und verselbstständigen sich gleich mit der ihnen inhärente Bedeutung in der Vielzahl unserer Erinnerungen.

Verschoben auf das Thema eines konzeptuellen Ansatzes von Malerei, der in Wachholz Arbeiten die Fläche der Leinwand – ausgehend von der physischen Referenz der Schachteln – als Folie begreift, referieren dieZündflächen bestehend aus rotem Phosphor wie die Sujets so auch auf ein trickreiches Potential. Mit ihm hebeln die Bilder in der Tradition der Pop Art sowie den konzeptuellen Untersuchungen eines Blinky Palermo, Daan Van Golden, AllanD’Arcangelo oder Kenneth Nolanddie Grenzen und Regeln der Malerei spielerisch aus, um sie auf der Basis alltäglicher Objekte gleichsam lachend zu überschreiten. Wie das fordernde Ausgreifen von Finger macht ihr Übergriff dabei nicht Halt vor dem Raum und überträgt die Streifen von Wachholz Installation auf die Schaufenster. Gegenüber den gemalten Bildern, erweckenseine Markisen in der Kühle der matten Metallrahmen der Fensterfront ein vermeintlich konträres Bild, dass den Blick in sein Inneres durch ihre Überlänge ironisch verwehrt. Hier verselbstständigen sich die Werke Thomas Wachholzs erneut und konterkarieren die narrative Struktur ihrer anfänglichen Offenheit wie eine visuelle Barriere, die unserem Blick auf eine Ikonographie des Alltags entgegentritt – zwinkernd in der Brechung der Sehgewohnheiten und leuchtend wie das Spiel mit den Erinnerungen an eine bunte Warenwelt und ihre ursprüngliche Nutzung, deren Assoziationen sich räumlich wie bildlich in der Malerei verschränken.

Text: Philipp Fernandes do Brito

Structured through opaque color fields, iconic symbols like stars, clouds and grids contoured by geometric outlines, the paintings of German artist Thomas Wachholz create a dense visual net of formal traces and personal memories. Exploring the hidden dimensions of everyday materials, Wachholz’s new works appropriate the formal layouts of matchboxes and matchbooks. Gathered over years in places like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, cinemas, clubs or companies, the mostly colorful designed boxes shift the artist’s perception to an object tied to specific places of our former past.

While the concrete physique and 3-dimensional construction of the box is lost in the transfer process of painting, the hidden abstraction found by Wachholz within their imprinted imagery and graphics becomes magnified. An evolution in which the former layouts advance into colorful combinations that emerge through the elimination of visual information. Here, the freed forms populate the canvases almost endlessly and adjust the combinations through their oversized shapes. The latter capture our view and invite us to explore their colorful dynamics, just enough to interact with each canvas in the series.

Accompanying the painted boxes’ layouts, Wachholz’s set-ups take ownership of the striking surfaces as actual ignitors that not only recall his former investigations of alchemistic practices, which involved fire to initiate reactions, but also symbolize the potential to truly activate the paintings. Endlessly expendable like the patterns in Blinky Palermo’s iconic “Flipper” paintings, their different styles applied in red phosphorus offer restrictions and yet a visual freedom that reconnects Wachholz’s compositions to the conceptual approaches in late 1960’s abstract painting investigated by US artists such as Allan D’Arcangelo, Kenneth Noland or Europeans like Daan van Golden.

Unfolding their visual narration in this conceptual process on the canvas like a matchbook, the resulting paintings set up new rules on their own and reveal the matchboxes and matchbooks as triggers of the past moments and places we first encountered them. It’s here, where Wachholz happily engages with the realms of abstraction using the freeness of the isolated figures and shapes to let them take on a new life fired by our memories and guided by their different art historical sources as well as their prior functional heritage. Just like catching a glimpse through the looking glass, the abstract forms allow us a glance at their world of multiplied meanings and shift according to the emotions and experiences we are invited to connect to their structures and shapes. Through Wachholz, we can see beyond them and discover ourselves activating our personal recollections of symbols twisted and flipped over by abstraction. Comparable to the visual information on several hundreds of matchboxes in his collections one sees spread out on a table in Wachholz’ studio, his paintings intertwine the formal references dating from different decades and sources to transcend their status of mere objects. Painting and the myriad possibilities offered by abstraction, become a tool for Wachholz to free the found images from their objecthood and release the compositions inherited in their inner architecture to visualize both the temporal circuit in which our system of references works and the compositional potential of images hidden unnoticed in our everyday objects. The resulting works reveal the ironic connections of art and composition, layout and symbol, form and function. Like the one single matchbox we spy out that winks at us with one eye, Wachholz asks us not to take him too seriously and proposes paintings that laugh both with and at the same time at their ironic twits.

Text: Philipp Fernandes do Brito

Mit seiner Installation „Fire Walk with Me“ transformiert Thomas Wachholz die Schaufenster des Ausstellungsraums ≈ 5 in zwei monochrome braun-rötliche monolithische Körper. Die Beschaffenheit kommt einem bekannt vor: die gleiche Oberfläche verwendet man auf den Seiten von Streichholzschachteln, um die Hölzer zünden zu können.

Das erste mal zeigt Wachholz seine „Reibflächen“ im öffentlichen Raum und lädt die Passanten ein Teil der in situ Arbeit zu werden. Die Wechselwirkung zwischen Künstler, Werk und Betrachter verdeutlicht sich in der dokumentierten Geste der Zündung auf der Fläche, aber auch in jedem anderen Eingriff in die Struktur der monochromen und monolithischen Körper.

Wachholz definiert die Fussgängerunterführung und den U-Bahnhof Ebertplatz als zusätzlichen Ausstellungsraum, der so fast zur Höhle wird. Die Wände eben dieser Höhle regulär eigentlich legal unantastbar, bricht Wachholz mit seiner Einladung genau diese Regel: er fordert zwar nicht auf zum Eingriff, zum Graffiti, zum Zündeln oder Spucken, aber gibt jeglicher Form von Reaktion die Möglichkeit sich selbst zu dokumentieren.

Die Arbeit „Fire Walk with Me“ kann initial im Rahmen der Eröffnung von den Besuchern mit Streichhölzer verändert werden. Im weiteren Verlauf der vierwöchigen Ausstellung überlassen der Künstler u. ≈ 5 die Flächen der sozialen „Erosion“ des Ebertplatzes.

Text: Vincent Schneider

MIER GALLERY is pleased to announce Strike Gently, a participatory installation by Cologne-based artist Thomas Wachholz. The exhibition will open Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 1107 Greenacre Avenue in West Hollywood, and will be on view through February 27, 2016. An opening reception will be held on January 16, 2016 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
Rules and the reduction of variables dictate Wachholz’s practice, driven by a profound fascination for supposedly monotonous activities, marked by the endless repetition of reiterative movements. The exhibition, evolving throughout its six-week duration, begins with unmarked panels covered with a custom-blended red phosphorous paint – Wachholz’s own chemical recipe. The panels are arranged in a horizontal line, mimicking the form of the red phosphorous strip on matchboxes. Half of the panels are monochromatic, as seen on American matchboxes and half are made up of the honeycomb pattern seen on European matchboxes. All the senses are activated when entering the space: you smell the leftover scent of sulfur and burnt wood; you see the quick burst of light when the match head meets the surface, igniting a small flame; you hear the swift friction of the red match tips running against the red phosphorous panels; you feel the crunch beneath your feet of the discarded matchsticks. The striking movements will leave traces on the panels, similar to a drawing.
Wachholz suggests an unromantic image of the artist by delegating activities to other people, machines, or scientific equations. If others associate creativity with what is new and ingenuous, and marked by the individual, he counters this with his concept of creativity in allegedly noncreative activities while magnifying such activities in order to shift perception. The notion of the singular, individuated artist is thus challenged and broken down. It is not the artist’s hand, but the activation of the work by participants that creates the work. The panels as a designed whole recede into the background when the specific creations by the individual visitors can take place.
The matchstick works open up entire compositions: the eye skips from ignition to ignition of these documentations, each of which, however, puts a small hiatus into our act of seeing. Wachholz’s oeuvre leads us to the insight that fleeting glances do not reveal anything, that engaging with and focusing on an object may result in seeing the act of seeing. He is quite simply interested in the simple things that reveal their complexity when we take a closer look.
While the experimental setups for his works are marked by stoic precision, they ultimately still explore the realm of the poetic. The dimensions of everyday materials, events, and techniques are radically shifted and redirected, shedding light on the perceived notion of freedom we share in devising and executing everyday activities.

At Thomas Wachholz’s debut at RaebervonStenglin — his first solo exhibition in Switzerland — a single dark wall greets the viewer. Painted in the red phosphorous mixture used on the side of matchboxes, the wall is the titular ‘Reibfläche’, a striking surface against which one can spark a match. A tub full of matches completes the invitation for the viewer to light up on the gallery wall; and in doing so a small erasure of the pigment happens, a trail of light amidst the dark.

Striking a match and watching it burn is the essence of Wachholz’s proposition: the pleasure of a small fire and the frisson of burning against building; but beyond this it is also the invitation to leave one’s mark. A performance that lasts the duration of the exhibition, done not by the artist himself but by anyone who wishes, it is also an evolving installation: a constellation of tiny swabs of light, each the trace of an individual action which cumulatively becomes a drawing. Wachholz has created the phosphorous pigment himself, formulating it exactly so that in striking a match it leaves a satisfying gestural mark, which in turn invites another, gradually covering the surface of the wall in a skein of indexical abstraction. The democratic, ensemble nature of Reibfläche (the first work in which Wachholz has involved the public in its making) is vital to its meaning: anyone can take part; and everyone is responsible for its creation.

In the back room a second work, titled 365, flips the communal activity of Reibfläche to an individual’s solitary creation. A flatscreen monitor depicts Wachholz engaged in the same activity as he invites in the previous room. The piece relays his setting light to a match for every day of the year with dramatic flourish, each time scarring the dark surface they hit. Condensing an everyday activity into just the action devoid of its purpose (the lighting of a cigarette, say) and compressing these moments of release into a rhythmic performance.