Abandoned places sometimes have something mysterious about them. Something unusual, unreal. If it's too quiet, too lonely, our current standard world of living sometimes seems inauthentic and at the same time attracts us magnetically. We take a closer look, sense and question. "If you watch reality, it will quickly turn surreal. Reality is magical anyway" says Maik Wolf, whose exhibition TECHTOTEM can be seen from July 4th to August 29th, 2015 at the Galerie Michael Schultz.
Wolf's works depict surreal moments of our world: deserted cityscapes, architectural ensembles, barren landscapes bathed in pale, artificial light. His inspiration is his own photographs and digital sketches and his imagination. While his earlier works show truer representations, his later works include increasingly surreal arrangements. Thus, individual letters appear, surrounded by landscapes, and shapes, symbols, figures in different sizes and with no apparent relation. Nothing is individually strange, the combination however is puzzling, like projection of the subconscious, although producing familiar impressions, but kept encrypted to our consciousness often times. The titles are also both complex and puzzling and refer to the image content. His latest series 'Vexiere' addresses vexing games (lat. vexare - to plague), puzzles wanting to be solved, unraveled or assembled usefully. Like oversized building blocks for giants, the shapes, letters and numbers lie about, inviting to play with them. His works create new realities in which we as their viewers are situated, where we gain space for reflection and begin - even in today's fast pace of our daily lives - to feel emptiness, to bear silence and with their surreal mystery to question what we perceive to be usual.
Maik Wolf studied at the University of Art and Design in Halle and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He lives and works in Berlin.