FINE PRINT: Thomas Kilpper at the Temple Gallery

The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.

options

FINE PRINT: Thomas Kilpper at the Temple Gallery

POSTED: Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 6:48 PM

Courtesy of Thomas Kilpper

Bringing you more Philagrafika 2010 coverage, at least twice a week.

Thomas Kilpper, a German artist who's exhibiting at the Temple Gallery (2001 N. 13th St., 215-782-2870) through April 11, is best-known for creating the largest print on the world. Titled State of Control, it takes up 1,000 square feet of a floor at the Ministry for State Security, and explores East Germany history from the Nazi era to the present. While he didn't create an original work for Philagrafika, he has decorated Temple's walls with huge, formidable prints of prominent historical characters and scenes.

City Paper: Your prints are very intricate — they involve multiple people, and you often occupy buildings to make them. Can you describe your artistic process?
Thomas Kilpper: For me, it crystallized that I can develop my work best in more complex projects. At first, there were the empty buildings, the real-estate junk of our society, as unused resources where I found it amazingly interesting and attractive to appropriate them, to occupy them, and to redefine and reanimate the site through my intervention. But the effort to get these projects going and to get permission from the owners soon proved a bit outrageous — weeks and months of patient waiting and communication back and forth are necessary, and often it still doesn't work out in the end for one reason or other. So now that's only feasible for me in individual cases, since I have received almost no institutional help.

CP: Did you make a work specifically for Philagrafika?
TK: I was supposed to develop a new project for Philagrafika — but for several reasons it was not possible, and we are planning to relocate that to a later time. Let's hope that will work out!

CP: I read that your piece State of Control is the largest print in the world. Did you set out to create the largest in the world, or did the piece make that happen on its own?
TK: It is the space and the dimensions of the site that dictate, somehow, the size. And I mean "size" as well from the angle of the enormous political and social dimension of the site. To go out and create an art piece at such a controversially loaded place needs something fundamental to cope with it. And the space I was working in — the former canteen — was that large, 800 square meters. That was a huge challenge, and I was happy to take it on.

CP: How does history factor into your prints?
TK: The location is a key reference and starting point, but I define location in very different ways. In the case of my project State of Control, at what had been the Ministry for State Security, it was clear to me from the very beginning that my work would not be limited to the German Democratic Republic, Mielke and the Stasi, but also the policies in the Federal Republic, dragnet investigation, mass data collection, SchÃ¤uble, as well as the Nazi past, the Gestapo, SS and figures like Heydrich, Dickopf, Saevecke.

CP: What is it about portraits in print that intrigue you so much?
TK: I am intrigued in finding ways to deal with the site, its history and social function, and what that means in relation to our presence and future. Using portraits of people involved in the site and its context is one method to bring it together. Of course, I am fascinated at the fact of how subtle faces differ, and how subtle you have to work to express totally different characters, different people. It is a classical format that will always be intriguing and interesting.

Posted by Julia West @ 6:48 PM Permalink | Post a comment

Comments (0)

Q&A with SHARI SOLANIS: "The goal isn't pornography"
What we're trying to do this weekend
SEXY TIME Q&A: I've never had an orgasm during sex with a man — and I'm 30!
Q&A with Tony Goldwyn: "Life is gray, and relationships are, too"
ICE CUBE: In Memoriam: Joe Tartaglia
CONCERT REVIEW: Primus (3D & quadraphonic sound) @ The Tower 10/17
NOW SEE THIS: Transit cop arrests marijuana activist for alleged disorderly conduct.
Coming soon to Philly: Two cockamamie movie promotion schemes
ICEPACK ILLUSTRATED: The Archbishop meets the Geator, the Mayor goes suit shopping, Le Bec Fin fin.
NOW SEE THIS: Tim and Eric direct Terry Crews for Old Spice

About this blog

Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

Follow Critical Mass editors Patrick Rapa and Emily Guendelsberger on Twitter:

@mission2denmark | @emilygee

Search this blog:

Topics:

Blog archives:

May
April
March

February
January

Past Archives: