We are proud to present our first exhibition with the sculptor Stefan Wissel at VAN HORN.

“In his work Stefan Wissel also always deals with questions of original and copy. He makes inquiries into original authorship and commentary, plays with theme and variation. He shifts the semantics of the object through simple gestures of lengthening or shortening, or the manipulation of color, proportion, size, and surface.”

“Stefan Wissel has a wide range of occasions for a new works: a snapped-up song, a functional furniture piece, a DIN-standardized construction element, a film sequence, a company sign covered in the scrap or a distinctive picture from the video work of another artists, which demand him for new artistic interventions and new and re-productions of existing elements. What always characterizes Stefan Wissel’s work is the conscious, curious, often astonishing view on objects and phenomena that remain below the perception threshold of his contemporaries. Stefan Wissel’s works are equally entitled in form and content. Sensitized for a feeling, an idea or a snapped-up sentence on the street, a complex, logically coordinated work is created with the aid of industrial production techniques, the exact determination of color, shape and material and the precise placement of work in space.”

“In Stefan Wissel’s own words it sounds like this: “If art is anything, then it is something that needs no legitimation.” And: “The question ‘Is it art or not?’ doesn’t interest me. I think it is nonsense to attempt a clear distinction. Art is above all a possibility of reality.” Thus he draws in equal measure on art and life and everyday. He taps what immediately surrounds him; restlessly attentive and precisely observing. At the same time Wissel translates a sculptural approach which is as disrespectful as it is precise into seductive, semantically and contextually compressed objects of great tactile presence and formal stringency. Wissel’s works are in equal measure variation, substrate, and essence. With every exhibition he invites his beholders to a round of cryptic observations and precisely calculated absurdities.
Stefan Wissel also casts light not least on the hardly comprehensible emotional content which is evoked when two unexpected things suddenly meet. ”
For the opening at VAN HORN a monographic catalogue, which was published on the occasion of Wissel’s solo-exhibition at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, will be on display.

Stefan Wissel, *1960, solo-exhibitions and group-exhibitions amongst others at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; Institut für Moderne Kunst, Nürnberg; Städtische Galerie Remscheid; Kunstverein Bremerhaven; Kunsthaus Baselland; The Nationalmuseum, Berlin; Kunstverein Wilhelmshöhe, Ettlingen; Kunstmuseum Heidenheim; Nationalgalerie Prag; Museum Baden, Solingen; Kunstmuseum Mühlheim an der Ruhr; Museum Ratingen; Städtische Galerie Gladbeck; Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento; Kunsthalle Bremen; Villa Merkel, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen; Esslingen; Kunstverein Hannover.
Since 2014 Stefan Wissel holds a professorship at the University Siegen.

Original quote True Detectives, Rust: “Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”

In January 2017 VAN HORN opens a second location, an c. 160 sqm exhibition space including storage – the new VAN HORN SCHAULAGER.
The Schaulager is located in an industrial area in Düsseldorf-Lierenfeld. It takes ca. five minutes by car from the gallery in Flingern to the showroom. The showroom opens up the possibility to organize exhibitions independently of the gallery program and the art fair calendar. This allows us to present the works of our artists all year roud and also to realize projects that extend the gallery program. The showroom is on view by appointment only.

Kröner, Magdalena: Dancing on the Ceiling, or The Poetry of Things, in: Latent Resources, ed. by Oliver Zybok, 2012 Ostfildern, p. 80-89, p. 82.
Büsing, Nicole; Klaas, Heiko: Stefan Wissel, in: Artist. Kunstmagazin, Vol. 57, 2011.
Kröner, 2012, p. 84.