Jan Voss. Was Neues vom Tatort?

25 November 2023 to 10 February 2024 ⟶ Galerie

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

About Crime, 2014, Mixed media/ canvas, 165 x 235 cm

Untitled, 2023, Paper relief, 93 x 71 x 5 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 2020, Collage on cardboard, 138 x 110 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 1978, Watercolour/canvas, 190 x 280 cm

Untitled, 2023, carton plume object, 69 x 59 x 5 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 2023, Mixed media/ canvas, 200 x 150 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Doctor Freud is not at home, 2014, Mixed media/ collage/ canvas, 210 x 285 cm

Untitled, 2022, Collage/ cardboard, 132 x 100 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 2021, Mixed media/collage/canvas, 110 x 200 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 1983, Serigraphy, Ed. 75, 72 x 60,5 cm

Untitled, 1972, Litography in colour, Ed. 150, 50 x 65 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Conseils du Docteur Amoroso, 1963, Mixed media/ canvas, 195 x 260 cm

Untitled, 2021, Collage on cardboard, 135 x 100 cm

Sorcellerie, 1991, Chamotte, 36 x 38 x 18 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled (Berliner Farben), 2014, Collage/paper, 65 x 50 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 1990, Mixed media/collage/paper, 75,5 x 116,5 cm

Installation View Galerie Georg Nothelfer. Photo: Gernot Seeliger

Untitled, 2023, Mixed media/collage on paper, 87 x 63 x 5 cm

Untitled, 2023, Mixed media/canvas, 200 x 150 cm

Galerie Georg Nothelfer is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Jan Voss this winter.

It all starts with lines that could be scratched into rock - beasts, human beings - predator, prey. - and playful - no fixed boundaries of space - rather expansions, beyond the edge, - which does not exist at all. In the course of Jan Voss’s work, the austerity of the strokes fades - they become fatter, more impasto - more colorful. Abundance increases, spreads. The sections become cluttered, a kind of jungle, in which who knows what deeds-misdeeds are committed. Men built like tanks grow out of the ground, impossible to ignore. Are they the ones who crack, or are they to be cracked?

Tipping of the moment. At breakneck speed, the habitat is populated. One being wants to dominate the other. Split-second actions. And the ballet master of this souped-up choreography is - a fox. Reineke de Vos - if the family name does not ring a bell! The hunter calls the fox’s gait “schnüren”. One foot placed in front of the other, so that a line results. This can also form loops, snares, in whose trap many fall - but Reineke has often pulled his head out of those. He has not only stolen many a goose … What a JANus-faced rascal! Caught red-handed.

The techno world also gradually creeps in, with android stuff and cyber beings. The jungle grows to be more and more impenetrable. Dimensions merge into other dimensions: nested world, sets the space in motion and deflates it at the same time. What else to do but to join this dance. This dizzying change of crime scenes.

The fox senses, scents his chance. /“Cold, delicately as the dark snow / A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; / Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now / Sets neat prints into the snow” (From: Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox.)

Everything overgrows, gradually, beyond the globe. There are no unclaimed plots left, but we can cut pieces out of the crust, glue them on top of each other and let them grow into an adjacent dimension. The fox is taking things to far now. Plasters everything, plagiarizes everything. The deeds step on each other’s paws.

This is the scene of happening.

Jan Voss (*1936 in Hamburg) moved to Paris in 1960 after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He was a participant in documenta 4 (1968) and held a professorship at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris (1987-92). The artist lives and works in Berlin and Paris.

The consistent t of his painting is the "orderly", but at the same time constantly moving chaos of a multi-layered, everyday situation within a chaotic course of time. In our media-influenced times, he reflects the unreasonable amount of signs that we have to absorb and process every day. Voss experiments with various techniques and materials; what they all have in common is the accumulation of different colour and form elements that intertwine, overlap and are connected by lines, signs and fragments of signs. "The works," says the writer Peter Handke, who is a friend of the artist, "give a house momentum, just as you give a swing momentum."

Jan Voss