Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition with German-based artist Andreas Kocks. Real Ghosts explores the sinuous properties of paper and metal through elaborate layers of hand carved and laser cut forms. Kocks effortlessly combines painterly linework with the sculptural ingenuity of an engineer, marrying disparate artistic practices with effortless grace. Working with aluminum leaf, coated brass, watercolor paper, and stainless steel, Kocks assembles wildly organic compositions full of implied movement with subdued color palettes. Circles burst outside of any self-imposed container and engage the wall itself as an integral part of the artwork. Soft, elastic textures draw attention to the diverse materiality, as playful, winding shapes overlap and disappear into each other like neural pathways or mangled branches.
Photo credit: Sabrina Oh, Seattle, WA
2022 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 180 x 90 x 5 cm // Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle
2022 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 177 x 87 x 5 cm // Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle
2022 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 109 x 80 x 5 cm // Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle
2022 // Installation View „Real Ghosts“ // Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle
2022 // Brass // 543 x 375 x 6 cm // Coporate Collection Redwood City, CA
Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York is excited to announce Heavy Metal, an exhibition of new work by Andreas Kocks.
In these lively, abstract sculptures, Kocks showcases precision-cut lines and provocative negative spaces that draw inspiration from the built environment and the natural world.
Kocks employs brass, metal leaf on paper, and wood to create winding, airy compositions of overlapping and interweaving shapes, embracing the tension between the strong presence of the solid material and the whimsical forms he creates.
Metallic elements are polished to a high sheen, mirroring light and reflecting the gallery and viewer, while negative spaces reveal the surroundings beneath and behind the pieces.
Through this duality, Kocks pulls the encompassing environment and the perspective of the viewer into the work itself.
Throughout the exhibition, Kocks challenges the structure of the art gallery, with a combination of framed and unbounded installations.
Solid Ether, a polished brass composition that bends and winds delicately along the wall, demonstrates Kocks’ playfulness and embrace of opposites.
The installation Opus consists of reflective rectangular structures radiating outward from a pentagonal nucleus, like a sprawling geometric metropolis or star-filled galaxy viewed from above.
Through these evocative works that are both weighty and architectural, delicate and organic, Kocks captures and celebrates moments of fragility and transition, dissolution and progression
2021 // Brass // 165 x 145 x 6 cm // Coporate Collection Las Vegas
2021 // Brass // 170 x 140 x 6 cm // Coporate Collection Las Vegas
2021 // Brass // 155 x 200 x 6 cm // Coporate Collection Las Vegas
2021 // Brass // 165 x 145 x 6 cm // Private Collection, Seattle
2021 // Brass // 135 x 128 x 6 cm // Private Collection, Seattle
2021 // Brass // 137 x 128 x 8 cm // Winston Wachter Fine Arte, Seattle
2021 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 312 x 542 x 6 cm, Neue Galerie, Dachau
2019 // Aluminum on Watercolor Paper // 255 x 180 x 5 cm // Private Collection Seattle
2019 // Gold Leaf On Watercolor Paper // 95 x 230 x 5 cm // MGM Studios Las Vegas, USA
SILHOUETTES AND SHADOWS – 7.9.2019 – 5.1.2020 // Helsinki – Kerava Art Museum
The German born Andreas Kocks is a trained sculptor. He uses thick watercolor paper, sometimes coated with Graphite, Aluminum-, Gold- or Palladium leaf.
Most of his wall installations are site-specific, such as the one he created for Sinkka .
In Kerava, Kocks wanted to blur the borders of the wall space, which is subdivided in two sections and create the illusion of a continuous flowing shape, moving from space to space. This effect is emphasized by the reflection of a glossy grey partition wall. Formed from multiple layers of paper, which Kocks has precut in his studio, the cloud-like shapes spread over the complete 18-meter length of the wall – and thus invite the viewer to experience the whole intersecting movements of the surfaces.
The artwork’s large dimension, the delicate material and the greyish background all have inspired the artist to come up with the title: Elephant’s Breath.
Unbeknownst to Kocks, he has added another layer of meaning to the work through Kerava’s historical circus, which once upon a time housed their elephant, Pepita, next to Sinkka…
As well as cutting the paper, Kocks has engraved relief type images, which are barely discernible on the papers surface. His working process resembles that of drawing with a knife, with the exception that there is no way of fixing any possible mistakes. Each cut is final. The thin lines mark out the edges of the space, over which the cloud-like forms move, like a soft breath of air.
Andreas Kocks lived and worked in New York for almost a decade, but now primarily lives in Munich. He studied sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1980 to 1988, received the Pollock-Krasner Award, New York in 2006 and was a Lecturing Artist at the Savannah College of Arts and Design in 2010/11. He always focused on the integration of Fine Art and Architecture, which is evident in his exhibition pieces, as well as in the public and private commissions he has created for museums and collections worldwide.
All Photos: Pekka Elomaa
2019 // Graphite, Gold Leaf, Aluminum Leaf, Platinum Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 70 x 104 x 2,5 cm // Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle, WA
2019 // Graphite, Gold Leaf, Aluminum Leaf, Copper Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 88 x 68 x 2,5 cm // Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle, WA
Untitled // 2009 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 480 x 450 x 8 cm // Private Collection New York, NY
2015 // Aluminum Leafs on Watercolor Paper // 195 x 155 x 7 cm // Installation at Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, NY
2004/2017 // Gold Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 56 x 132 x 5 cm, framed // Private Collection New York, NY
2004/2017 // Aluminum Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 70 x 198 x 5 cm // Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, NY
2003/2017 // Watercolor Paper // 129 x 75 x 5 cm // Installation at Sebastian Fath Contemporary Mannheim
2016 // Aluminum on Watercolor Paper // 118 x 90 x 7 cm // Private Collection // New York
2015 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper on Wood // 121 x 99 x 7 cm // Private Collection Starnberg
2018 // Aluminum on Watercolor Paper on Wood // 152 x 152 x 10 cm, framed // Private Collection Los Angeles, CA
2018 // Graphite on Watercolor Paper // 320 x 688 x 6 cm // Installation Museum August Macke Haus Bonn
2016 // Gold Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 87 x 67 x 6 cm, framed // Private Collection New York, NY
2016 // Gold Leaf on Watercolor Paper // 87 x 67 x 6 cm, framed // Private Collection Palm Beach, FL
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 112 cm // Artist Studio, Munich
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 56 cm // Courtesy Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, Seattle
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 56 cm // Courtesy Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, Seattle
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 56 cm // Courtesy Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, Seattle
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 56 cm // Courtesy Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, Seattle
2020 // Handmade Paper, carved // 76 x 56 cm // Courtesy Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, Seattle
2015 // Silver Leaf on Handmade Paper // 38 x 28 cm // Sebastian Fath Contemporary Mannheim
2015 // Graphite on Handmade Paper // 38 x 28 cm // Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, NY
2015 // Graphite on Handmade Paper // 38 x 28 cm // Private Collection Mannheim
2015 // Aluminum Leaf on Handmade Paper // 38 x 28 cm // Sebastian Fath Contemporary Mannheim
