Wolfram Adalbert Scheffler

Wolfram Adalbert Scheffler gives his students at the HfBK Dresden the following ‘mission statement’ to guide them: painting, and particularly drawing, should be used as a direct, spontaneous and radical means of expression in the search for one’s own truth. Routines should be broken, side paths taken, and dead ends understood as part of the learning process. As a student himself, Scheffler only spent a few months inside an art academy. His academy consisted of literature and philosophy, books and – empirical experience. His paths, in the quest for (self-)knowledge, were mostly side roads; his attitude is one of detachment; his method is reduction. The artist disappears behind the form; his signature style vanishes into the tangle of lines. His works do not depict space; they seek to be space themselves.

»Scheffler's more recent drawings are almost always linear. They have a beginning and an end, which is always a beginning again, they are finite and at the same time infinite. In their concentration on the essential, they [...] have something of the protocols of someone who inspects a crime scene before the crime has been committed. Hence the excitement and the energy. What Scheffler records as a draughtsman is the time before the crime. It can be long or short; the drawing breaks off at the moment the event occurs. Its finality lies in the unfinished.«

— MATTHIAS FLÜGGE

Matthias Flügge spoke at the opening on Friday 18 March at 8 pm.

The artist was present at the opening.

With this exhibition, the Leonhardi Museum in Dresden showcased Scheffler’s latest work. On display were the artist’s paintings, drawings and photographs, an installation in the Leonhardi Cabinet, and even a landing pad for aliens.

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition was published in collaboration with Galerie Pankow, Berlin.

KI generiert: Das Bild zeigt einen minimalistischen Ausstellungsraum mit verschiedenen Kunstwerken an den Wänden. In der Mitte des Raums befindet sich eine skulpturale Installation aus weißen Stangen.

Biography
Wolfram Adalbert Scheffler was born in Chemnitz in 1956. in 1980, he began studying at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, which he dropped out of in the same year. With his artistic work and non-conformist attitude, he had a great influence on the underground art scene in the GDR, which he left in 1986. He then lived in Paris, Amsterdam, Biel and Berlin, and since 2012 Scheffler has been Professor of Painting and Graphics at the Dresden University of Fine Arts.