Gert & Uwe Tobias

May 6– September 16, 2018

"Art and Coal" - Exhibition of the Ruhrfestspiele 2018 and also an exhibition project of the RuhrKunstMuseen 

2018 sees the end of coal mining and with it an era that has shaped German history for the last 150 years. The coal phase-out prompted the RuhrKunstMuseen to implement the largest exhibition project ever realised on the theme of ‘Art & Coal’ across all cities. This year's Ruhrfestspiele art exhibition thus also returns to the origins of the festival.
The artist duo Gert & Uwe Tobias create narrative spaces. The twin brothers, born in 1973 in Brașov (Kronstadt), Transylvania, have been working together since their studies - ‘One and one is three for us, and three is the work’ - and have since defined collage as their working principle. Their complex pictorial worlds quote classical modernism, but also integrate everyday cultural finds, Art Brut motifs and elements of folk art. 

At the centre of the Recklinghausen exhibition are large-format woodcuts, printed like a puzzle, which captivate with their exuberant imagination and simultaneous technical asceticism, humour and subtle artistry. They are surrounded by wall paintings that cover all three floors of the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen. In addition, there are new, multi-part series of ceramic objects. Gert & Uwe Tobias approach the theme of mining in a wide variety of facets and realise an installative Gesamtkunstwerk that involves the exhibition visitor almost physically. The narrative structure of their staging interweaves motifs from the mining world above and below ground, but remains associatively open. The exhibition once again demonstrates the Tobias brothers' fascination for the grotesque and ambivalent, for playing with seductively colourful surfaces and looking into abysmal depths.