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Nottingham Contemporary Hosts Gert and Uwe Tobias Exhibition

The Tobias twins have acquired a growing reputation for their distinctive, jointly authored repertoire of large woodprints, small paintings on paper, typewriter drawings, collaged books and ceramic sculptures on elaborate geometric stands. The exhibition consists entirely of new work in each of these idioms made for the exhibition, which they will assemble within a wall painting installation drawing on the legacy of Constructivist exhibition design.

Taken together the works evoke a fictitious world idiosyncratically mined from various folk and popular visual idioms, especially idioms relating to Romanian customs, or rather, cultural expectations of those customs. Their performative work turns the viewers into anthropologists stumbling on a compulsive culture whose codes can't be cracked. Their Carnivalesque marks, birdmen and skeletons remain cheerfully ghoulish enigmas. In their work, Modernism and the Dark Ages inexplicably synthesize.

The centrepiece of their exhibition is a 6 metre woodcut, made up of a number of different prints. The work is shown in the entire installation they have created, turning the primitive into the contemporary. In addition to the woodcuts, the exhibition includes watercolour paintings, drawings made with old-fashioned typewriters and handmade ceramic sculptures. Cabinets contain collages that allude to the Romanian tourist industry.

They have created a set of hand coloured limited edition etchings, postcards and a poster for Nottingham Contemporary which are available to buy.

Source:www.guide2nottingham.com|

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