BERLIN.- Biographical experiences and everyday observations serve as the point of departure for Robert Elfgen’s works. With humour and irony, he takes a playful approach to the relationship between production and utility in art, nature and society. The artist frequently works for an extended period with formal leitmotifs, which he derives from nature. Belonging to these series are animals that are made of wooden inlays and mounted on a monochrome background, abstract-geometrical paintings, which imitate the architecture of beehives, or milky, semi-transparent surfaces, and backgrounds that are reminiscent of different atmospheric conditions in nature. The works combine artisanal execution with improvisation. Age-old artistic techniques such as glass engraving, marquetry, metal etchings and relief printing are juxtaposed with used materials, found objects, chance occurrences, and mechanical bricolages.

Elfgen includes the architecture of the exhibition site in the overall concept, and a recurrent approach is the play with real and illusionistic space in both his collages and installations. Echoing sacred art and architecture, the artist creates a symbolic totality that is conveyed by physical movement, and which makes it possible to experience the private mythology he develops. Transitional situations, social threshold rituals, the cycle of nature and shifts between the material and immaterial states, all provide the motifs for his symbolic, often whimsical visual worlds. When the viewer enters one of his installations, the sculptures, assemblages, collages and films are linked associatively and transformed into spatial allegories, whose themes are the (productive) relationship between nature and human beings.

Robert Elfgen studied first with John Armleder at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig before transferring to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he completed his studies as a master scholar of Rosemarie Trockel. He lives and works in Cologne. Solo exhibitions include the upcoming presentation at Oldenburger Kunstverein (2015), development, Sprüth Magers Berlin (2012), des bien ich, Sprüth Magers Cologne (2008), expedition, westlondonprojects, London (2006), and 1 + 1 = 3 Elfgen — Technik, Bonner Kunstverein (2005). Moreover, he participated in group exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (2013-14), Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2012), Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe (2011), Paul Thek — Werkschau im Kontext zeitgenössischer Kunst, ZKM Karlsruhe (2007-2008), and Kunstverein Kassel (2006) among others.