Thomas Kiesewetter works in a large Berlin studio in daylight or artificial light depending on what he is working on. He is known for a his practice of sculpture based on the quest for forms, first and foremost through a graphical approach. He draws, these drawings themselves being full-fledged works on paper, then he creates three-dimensional models of his sculptures, smaller and in lighter materials – paper, plastic, wood or cardboard – then the final sculpture.
Every year, some twenty or so sculptures are created in the studio, made in metal and painted, each one unique. Some of them – one or two per year – are cast in bronze and painted in threes, and so are not manually structured metal sculptures like the others.
One can say of these works that they have in the positive meaning of the term, ‘a loaded inheritance’.
Thomas Kiesewetter’s work is nurtured by his central European roots, Constructivism and Bauhaus, but also Cubism, through his studies on the abstraction of the form, use of industrial and everyday materials, and studies of colours.
His work on the integration of the sculpture and the plinth in the same ‘poor’ industrial material is a contribution to the solutions sought by modern and contemporary sculpture, a field in which the question of the plinth is always open.
His links to American sculpture are noticeable and combine in his work with the above-mentioned 20th century works, especially the cutting and soldering of metal introduced by Gonzales and Picasso; these links, completely reinterpreted by the major American sculptures are found in Kiesewetter, in addition to the use of scavenged materials and colours ranging from the Pop Art palette to the dissonant colours of present-day pictorial works. Kiesewetter absorbs and transforms them.
Another important aspect of the work is an impression of ambiguity in the degree to which its abstract forms are expressive, evoking a representation, sometimes charged with humour.
Kiesewetter is an innovator who has also internalised the conventions of sculpture.
For his exhibition, Thomas Kiesewetter will place three major exterior sculptures in painted metal on the ground floor of the gallery. A sculpture on plinth and a set of drawings will also be exhibited.
