Hanns Schimansky

Hanns Schimansky's medium is paper, and his most important means of expression is the line. His visual language consists of abbreviations, ciphers and signs that he inscribes or inscribes onto his medium - sometimes seemingly freely improvised, but much more often just as seemingly subject to a basic grid of folds. Terms such as "representational", "abstract" or "informal" are meaningless in the face of Schimansky's complex associative structures. For the artist, drawing - and folding - is above all a sensual affair, rather than a sensory one. Schimansky leaves the sensing to the viewer, who is able to translate visual fictions into his own pictorial worlds, fantasies or even scores.

Biographical information
Hanns Schimansky, born in 1949, studied as a master student under Gerhard Kettner at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He still lives and works in the city today. He is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and winner of the Hans Theo Richter Prize 2012 of the Saxon Academy of Arts.