Silhouettes and Shadows

Helsinki - Kerava Art Museum
07 September 2019 — 05 Januar 2020

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.