Ben Greber

Artists create works of art. Intuitions and thoughts are inscribed in their forms. Understood in this way, works are materialisations of what was previously immaterial. These move into exhibitions. Thoughts become visible in them.

Catalogues are generally published to accompany them. This is the second time - after Gregor Schneider – that the Konschthal Esch has published a book instead of a catalogue to accompany an exhibition. The aim is to focus even more clearly on the artist's world of ideas behind the visible aspects of his works.

For hardly any other artist of his generation does this form of publication seem more appropriate than for Ben Greber. After all, Greber is a melancholic ponderer who draws his art from the history of his family and his surroundings, thinking and reflecting.

The background to his works is always overly complex. He never lets go of the fact that the candlestick in his teenage room was once an insulator on the fence of the Auschwitz concentration camp. It preoccupies him, haunts him as it were. He then gets to the bottom of this discovery, uncovers the history, strips the thing of its pure materiality.

Raimund Stecker seeks to introduce a linear order into this sculptural, and therefore three-dimensional, complexity. Taking as his starting point the mysterious logic inside the number box in Dürer's Melencolia I, he sets out to stage the family imbroglios in which Greber finds himself woven, to tell them like a story.

For Raimund Stecker, the result of his preoccupation with Ben Greber's art is unambiguous: it can only be understood as an essay, a set of thoughts extended in height and time, which must be 'read' visually!

Available at the Konschthal.

Selling price: 28€