EXHIBITION TIP: TOM KRISTEN.

The artist Tom Kristen has been with me for a very long time, or rather: a picture by him. A few years ago, I came across a small print by him by chance in a gallery in Regensburg, which I quickly decided to give myself for Christmas. This picture has been hanging in my living room ever since. The people of Regensburg are now also familiar with Tom Kristen, as he designed the artwork “Together” in the atrium of the Jewish community center at Brixener Hof. It shows a ribbon of writing. The poem “Together” by Jewish poet Rose Ausländer can be read in golden letters floating in front of the entrance. This work evoked admiration and recognition in wide circles.

Tom Kristen has generally made a name for himself in recent years with art in public and sacred spaces. Now, Straubing-born Tom Kristen is exhibiting in his native Eastern Bavaria for the first time in ten years, at the artspace Erdel gallery in Regensburg. Under the title “Sänger im Dickicht”, gallery owner Wolf Erdel is showing paintings, drawings and prints by Tom Kristen from 2009-2019 from February 27 to April 24, 2020.
Tom Kristen kindly answered a few questions in advance:

Dear Mr. Kristen,

Mountains, clouds, angels and fauns often appear in your pictures. Mechtild König Kugler said of you: “Tom Kristen pours out his pictorial worlds as if from a large toy box with the power of the childlike play, with the freedom inherent in wild thinking.” That sounds poetic.
A quote from you that we found on your Instagram page @tom.kristen reads “If the day would come when it would no longer be a mystery to me, I would clean everything up and never paint a picture again. The inexplicable as a ‘value in itself’, as a reason for research, has always been the strongest motivation for my work, which I pursue with childlike curiosity.”
How would you describe your style?
To be honest, the word “style” always makes me a little uncomfortable, as it is always associated with a system of order, a drawer that I don’t want to be pigeonholed into. Maybe the day after tomorrow I will do “something completely different” and this freedom is very important to me. However, my work can be described as figurative and expressive, a tradition that is particularly strong in southern Germany (Spur group, Geflecht etc.).
What is important to me is the work strategy, i.e. the painter’s approach to the picture. Karl Mordstein, a painter colleague whom I hold in high esteem, summed it up as follows:
“Perhaps the best way to escape a world that is becoming ever faster and ever more hysterical is to reduce one’s own speed or even to stand still.” This is a quote that has become the motto of my work. So my work is more a reflection of the making hand, which I allow as much freedom as is possible at the moment. Intuition thinks and the intellect receives… This doesn’t always happen equally well, but it can be practiced with each new work and involves a lot of work and detours. But if the experiment is successful, if the experimental arrangement works, then resonances arise, then stories are told that touch me, that concern me, that I can believe in. In other words, a work process as a reflection on creativity itself using symbols that function as an associative motor for further thoughts.

The exhibition at the artspace Erdel gallery is entitled ‘Singers in the thicket’. How did this title come about?
The title is a fantastic example of an alternative and creative approach in the sense of ‘wild thinking’ or bricolage (bricolage = French: “tinkering”): Placing objects in a new context that does not conform to the original normative. A groping, making detours and experimenting until a solution emerges. Heinrich Grupe was a village school teacher who published his “Seasonal Hiking Books” for children in the 1950s. Grupe recognized a creative way of summarizing and did not classify the birds scientifically into genera and families but, for example, according to the places where he observed them singing: There are singers on the roof of a house, birds that sing in flight, singers on high trees and also singers in thickets.
What fascinates me is that this approach works just as precisely. There are only two bird species in our latitudes that sing in the hidden thickets of spruce and cypress trees: the linnet and the dunnock – and these are very easy to distinguish. So here too, creative thinking based on observation and sensory impressions creates a context that is essentially characterized by respect and leaves nature its dignity. Material for dozens of new pictures and an exhibition title that describes my approach.

I have a picture of you in my living room at home. By which artist or which artist would you prefer to have a picture at home if you had the choice?
I would prefer to have a comprehensive “loan subscription” …. 😉

The artspace Erdel gallery is showing paintings from 2009 to 2019. Looking back, to what extent has your art changed over time?
For me, the works on display from the last ten years are characterized by a rediscovery of painting. I had previously worked almost exclusively in printmaking. The initial spark was certainly the technical aspects necessary for lithography and the associated confrontation with color. Since then, I have hardly ever bought ready-made colors, preferring instead to make them myself from pigments.

What are you currently working on?
Having just completed the house chapel of the Regensburger Domspatzen, I now have the opportunity to design a new liturgical interior for the parish church of St. Elisabeth in Blaibach. We are currently working on the stone in the quarry and have to hurry so that everything is finished by Easter.

You graduated in architecture from the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg. Do you have a favorite place in Regensburg?
Even though I haven’t lived in Regensburg for almost 20 years, the whole of Regensburg is still my favorite place, a home. I had a wonderful little apartment on the Ölberg when I was a student. Back then, Regensburg still had plenty of unrenovated corners, an Eldorado for the flâneur in me. Favorite place: the old town and, of course, the new synagogue in particular. A level of architecture that is rare to find. Volker Staab’s office has succeeded in creating a spatial miracle in a cramped old town situation with the precision of clockwork.

Thank you very much for the interview!

The exhibition by Tom Kristen will open on February 27, 2020 at 8 p.m. at artspace Erdel at Fischmarkt 3. Tom Kristen will be present at the vernissage.

Exhibition: Sänger im Dickicht
from February 27 to April 24, 2020
artspace Erdel, Fischmarkt 3, 93047 Regensburg.
Exhibition opening hours:
Monday to Friday from 11.00-18.00 and by appointment.

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