For a long time it was pretty quiet around Sven Friedel. The jack of all trades from Glonn had to pull the handbrake. School principal, football coach, artist and impresario of the scrap gallery, and all with great passion – that was obviously a bit too much, even for a grown man like him. But half a year ago Friedel started welding again in his garage. And how! Once ignited, there is no stopping him. An exhibition in the scrap gallery, which shows Friedel’s works together with those of the painter Karin Nahr, who recently also withdrew due to health problems. But now both Nahr and Friedel have risen again like the phoenix, bearing witness to their still exuberant creativity.
Artists in the mirror: Karin Nahr and Sven Friedel in front of the interactive installation “Your Head”.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
An interplay that harmonizes at least as much as that of the bands that delight the guests of the Schrottgalerie every weekend. After the vernissage on Thursday, March 2nd, things will continue on Friday with the shimmer trio: Evelyn Huber on the harp, Gustavo Strauss on the violin and Jakob Lakner on the clarinet present chamber music klezmer, jazz and tango – definitely an experience. And on Saturday, March 4th, things will really get groovy: Bid there MO´FAZZ! Soul, Funk, Jazz and Latin.
Friedel and Nahr have known each other for a long time, they are and were colleagues, as creative people, but also as educators. Nahr once taught art at a middle school that Friedel ran. But also privately, the paths crossed again and again, because both were very active in the art scene of the region. “But we’ve never actually exhibited together,” says Friedel – and grins. He makes no secret of his joy at having persuaded Nahr to take part on a bench with a view of the mountains: it’s great that her art is now being seen again. “Besides, it’s an honor for me to exhibit with her.”
The focus of this show is the human being. Here is a portrait that Karin Nahr created using paint and wax.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
“Heads and…” Friedel came up with as a theme for the joint show – which the two artists from Glonn implemented in very different ways. Scrap converter Friedel populates the gallery with his three-dimensional objects, painter Nahr shows her technical versatility on the walls with drawings, prints, engravings and miniatures on ceramics. But everywhere the viewer looks into faces: Both Friedel and Nahr have created portraits, figures in motion and small scenes. The human being is the focus here. In its individuality, but also with all its facets, the beautiful and the terrible.
The latter applies above all to Sven Friedel’s work. He says he feels incredible anger on some issues. For example racism. The scrap-man’s answer is a large, haunting installation: two heads of cabbage, one light and one dark, impaled side by side on a metal frame. According to Friedel’s catalog raisonné, a “priceless” utopia. Another, similar work is dedicated to the subject of “abuse”: the artist once found a series of old door fittings, weeping keyholes, which are now attached to the wall in silent accusation. “I would like two to three hundred euros for this,” says Friedel. “For the Child Protection Association.”
Sven Friedel’s artistic commentary on the subject of “abuse”.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
But the Glonner does not only work on difficult topics. Many of his objects, which are all made of rubbish, are friendly, even humorous. If only because they tell of a rescue, of a second life after the junkyard. “Each of these figures has a story,” says the artist, namely that of the origin and original function of their material. Friedel especially welds metal together in new ways, but also works with wood and stone. A whistle from Tuntenhausen’s organ, which was torn down, old car parts, a root stock, ball bearings, scythe blades – he knows how to combine all of these into sculptures, whether they be abstract, comic-like or more realistic.
The scrap converter created this “guardian angel for cyclists” from a rusted pedal.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Sometimes Friedel gets really personal. The “Baseline View”, for example, is dedicated to a former tennis opponent. “He drove me crazy with his arrogance,” says the artist and laughs – revenge is not exactly a pretty portrait made of wrapping paper, balls for eyes and an old tennis racket. Ken Saro-Wiwa, on the other hand, is getting serious again. Friedel also portrayed the Nigerian civil rights activist and writer, who was sentenced to death in a show trial in 1995 and later hanged. A work that is by no means just technically impressive. “The Baron von der Schinderbruggn” in turn is a homage to Friedel’s own origins: He grew up in the former Munich glass-broken district of Sendling, where the Flaucher offered plenty of space for all sorts of memorable experiences.
This work is dedicated to a murdered civil rights activist.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
While Friedel’s objects are solitary, Karin Nahr’s metier is variation. Alternating between painting and graphics, she likes to work out motifs in different techniques. A drawing then becomes a wax image and then perhaps a screen print. “And the exciting thing is that this results in a completely different expression every time,” says Nahr. “Just a different color scheme can make a print look completely different.” A woman named Margit, for example, is often encountered in the exhibition; the portraits are sometimes wild, sometimes severe, sometimes enigmatic. Nahr also likes to be surprised by his own work: “A color gradient, a bizarre shape, a spontaneous association – and you change the original intention!”
Karin Nahr calls this version of a woman named Margit “rumor”.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Nahr’s wax pictures are particularly attractive: thanks to liquid paraffin, a needle and acrylic or oil paint, they offer an attractive combination of fine lines and painterly structures. “I like that a lot,” admits the artist herself. Some of these works also offer a freer implementation of the theme. Titled “Approach” or “Touch” and created from original blob images, they show fine, seemingly organic structures in a beguiling light-dark contrast. In general: Color needs very little Nahr, it creates strong expression even in the reduction.
This “Schaukler” comes along extremely peppy.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
This also applies to their “naked people”. Because Nahr spent a long time drawing nudes for the Ebersberger Kunstverein, the corresponding sheets are piling up with her. And here, too, she later worked out many sketches using other techniques, in ink, with wax or as monotypes. You can see couples like lonely ones, stoic ones as well as moved ones. And somehow they all go straight to the heart, especially with their charming gaps and with their clearly emerging feelings. Life is just hard. But sometimes very beautiful. Right in the scrap gallery.
“Heads and…”: Exhibition by Karin Nahr and Sven Friedel in the Glonner Schrottgalerie, vernissage on Thursday, March 2, at 7 p.m. Further opening hours: Saturday and Sunday, 4./5. March from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and on the concert evenings. Registration by email to [email protected] or at www.schrottgalerie.de