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Tarek Lutz

art critics; Dr. Katrin Boskamp -Priever ( April 2002)

Tarek Lutz's delicate sculptures are characterized by his interest for abstraction and reduction. He initially experimented with wood in 1997/1998 he created the figures of two musicians, one playing the bass and the other one the trumpet, sawn out of a single tree trunk. Then the artist born in 1969 in Reutlingen, whose art is influenced by the kinetic art of Jean Tinguely, took a crucial trip to Basel, where the objects of the Swiss artist inspired him to do his first welded iron sculptures. Lutz tried new techniques and used black drawn sheathing iron bars to create mostly under life seized, detached sculptures. "Neutral” bars close into form fragile, slender, almost dematerialized figures, which gain the character of a spontaneous vividness by the contrasting elements of a brittle, plain and functional material and an almost graphic form emphasized depiction.

"Steel meets music” like the roughly sketched, cursory notes of a concert-goer, the figures that combine to form a whole orchestra including strings, a wind section, percussionist and a concert pianist ( "Rhapsody...”1.70 x 10 x 4m 2001 ) - a visualization ( surprising due to the simplicity of it means ) of George Gershwin's famous jazz symphony and it's first performance in1924 in the New York Aeoelian Hall by Paul Whiteman, meet the "King of Jazz” and his legendary orchestra.

Thinking in models is characterized by generalizing form of expression, a reduction to the most important aspects that, despite it's concrete for the necessary anatomical pointers. In playing with the imagination of the observer, who tries to visualize, of volume, dynamics and, not least the music, there is no use for the step towards intensification, duplication, and chronological variation of visual stimuli as in Tinguely's work.

In Lutz's paintings, analogue tendencies can be found: Stickmen on a colored background form a patch work pattern, implicating a similar expression of joie de vivre and vitality. Lutz has been very interested in human anatomy and movement, thus adding body language as a central medium expression to his unmistakably anthropomorphous forms from the very beginning. The sculptures of the "Rhapsody...” orchestra express individual emphasis , sympathy, devotion, passion, and absentmindedness of making music, just like the group of figures "Jazz and Chet” (2001) in which important jazz musicans like Chet Baker ( 160 x 70 cm ) Miles Davis (" Miles the trumpet”, 160 x 60) and John Coltrane ( "John”, 170 x 50 ) come together for a session.

The artist is fascinated by the musicians obsession, their lifestyle and their attitude, and he succeeds in giving a perfect expression to the range of human emotions. Less is more. In order to specify the shape or to show how much character can be expressed in the posture of a person, Tarek Lutz uses very view creative means. The most important aspect is the infallible sense for the human anatomy, for physical centers and body posture, a sensitive feeling for the right angle and the right inclination in order to produce the necessary emphatic effect in the observer. Even without the use of kinetic energy, Lutz's sculptures appear to be vivid, to have a soul even. Lighting is of great significance in the accumulation of such different visual impression. A different lighting brings new dimensions to unusual arrangements: Dancing shadows on the wall with their fleeting weightlessness and their proneness to create abstract patterns and linear mesh evoke the questions about the nature of reality.

Katrin Boskamp-Priever

 

 

 
   

   © 2008 by Tarek Lutz  

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