A film tour through the exhibition “Ich & Du” in the district office is already possible. There is an extension until October.
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The impressive picture “Daydreamers” by Gerhard Silber can be seen in the exhibition in the Hofheim District Office. Photo: Sonja Lehnert
HOFHEIM / TS – The exhibition “Ich & Du” in the district office of the Main-Taunus-Kreis will be extended until October 1st, so was the good news. All events in the supporting program in May have been postponed to the extended period from July.
Anyone who would like to take a look at the works of art can get a small foretaste of the exhibition in the film of the exhibition tour with the curator Andrea Simon.
Visitors stop in astonishment in front of the large-format picture “Daydreamers” by Gerhard Silber. Surprised because here, almost at the end of the tour, another work is on display that stands out from the other works in terms of both content and painting technique. Thanks to the careful selection and placement of the curator, the viewer can always expect another, perhaps unfamiliar, view of the you, thrown back on the self. Silver returned to painting late. For many years the world of science and technology determined his professional path, which he embarked on after a broken apprenticeship as a poster painter with retraining as a technical draftsman.
He was enthusiastic about engineering, especially continuum mechanics and material theory, which he perfected up to his habilitation. The biomechanics of humans, made visible by human models developed on the computer, leading to the development of, for example, the optimal sports shoe, occupied him. In 2012 he co-founded the “Material and Product Design” course at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Offenbach and the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. Among other things, this led him back to art in 2013, which he plunged into autodidactically. Gerhard Silber has been working as a freelance artist since 2016.
“There are many parallels between science and art,” he said, and mechanics is also very creative. It is always the task to depict a phenomenon, mathematically or artistically.
The dark, restrained coloring in Silber’s works underlines the tragic events that he dealt with. Refugees, hooligans, observers of atomic bomb tests and rocket launches are the characters whose facial features are far more moving for the artist than the events themselves. “I am fascinated by the expression of the faces,” he explained.
Gerhard Silber focuses on socially critical issues, which, however, take a back seat to the people who are exposed to the tragic events. The “Daydreamers” succumb to the illusion of making music. The concentrated expression of every single face is the fascinating thing.
Especially with regard to the current situation during the corona pandemic, those who remain in the movement give the impression of being frozen in time and not being able to slip into the flowing movements of making music together.
But since “the world is reinventing itself at every moment,” as Silber said, persistence cannot last.
The artists’ perspectives on people and the world give visitors to the exhibition the opportunity to discover new things by incorporating not only portraits and bodies, but also attachment and community, as with Gerhard Silber, as artistic motifs.
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