With his enquriy Björn Holzweg proceeds on the path of wild animals into unknown scenery. Being discovered there, he brings back to daylight the stories of freedom fighters and revolutionists. That’s how he turns one’s gaze on past and present happenings that lie off the beaten track and far from everyday life. For him it’s not about communicating a concrete message – what kind of lesson one learns is up to oneself.
The artist was born in Leipzig in 1979 and since 2004 he’s been living and working in Hamburg. His art is shaped and formed in paintings, drawings, sculptures and watercolour-paintings.
The protagonists of his works are mostly wild animals or more likely: woodland animals.
In drawings he shows them powerful and dynamic while hunting. One sees the hunter – if bear, wolf or tiger – as a precise and lifelike pencil drawing. Whereas the prey appears as an undefined atmospheric play of colours without marking. In his sculptural works made of modelling material the animals are portrayed in heroic manner. They are freedom fighters with whom the artist practises the revolt. With them Björn Holzweg remembers the stories about revolutions and resistance fights, but at the same time turns one’s gaze towards the current fate of these animals. He ingeniously and formally assembles these different spheres of meaning: he assembles the surface of the sculptures with a complex net of precise triangles. Geometrical forms are a symbol of our society to the artist: calculating, repetitive and eternal. As such he illuminates the influence of these on the lifestyle of animals. And even when these live far away in wild forests their habitats are intensely moulded by the structures of human society. Björn Holzwegs works therefor remind one of an often forgotten, but in reality co-exsisting world that lies remote from urban living space.
Instagram @bjoern_holzweg
Selected Exhibitions
2015
Knotenpunkt Festival 2015- International Group Exhibition
Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg
The daily mood of Björn Holzweg- Solo Exhibition
Beinlich Contemporary, Bielefeld
60 Jahre Kunst in Hamburg- Group Exhibition
Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg
Neusicht Festival- International Group Exhibition
Neubad, Luzern
2014
Knotenpunkt Festival 2014- International Group Exhibition
Kolbenhof, Hamburg
Katzen gehen immer- Group Show
Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg
Millerntor Gallery- International Group Exhibition
Millerntor Stadium, Hamburg
Sherwood Forest- Solo Exhibition
Affenfaust Galerie, Hamburg
2013
Gumsenplü- with Nils Kasiske, Nils Knott, Patrick Farzar
Feinkunst Krüger, Hamburg
Overtime- International Group Show
Heliumcowboy Artspace, Hamburg