Tobias Hoffknecht
Needs

22 JUN until 31 AUG 
Opening – 21 JUN, 7-9 pm

Crone Berlin is currently presenting the latest solo exhibition by Düsseldorf-based artist Tobias Hoffknecht. Under the title Needs, he is showing new sculptures that seem to merge with the space and put our perception to the test.

Tobias Hoffknecht can’t help himself: time and again, he repeatedly confronts an overpowering opponent or friend — the omnipresent aesthetics of the Bauhaus that still abound today.

Hoffknecht’s minimalist, highly precise yet humorous sculptures raise the question of why Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) continues to dominate our everyday lives and our viewing habits; what its core, its meaning or perhaps even its sensuality actually is; why we cannot escape it and whether it is possible to reduce the reduced even further.

For his new series Needs, Hoffknecht uses the visual Bauhaus metaphor to tell of the futility of the ephemeral even more forcefully than previously: heavy tubular steel structures are seemingly effortlessly swallowed up by walls, curved metal bodies sink into the floor with determined resistance — as if they were one with everything and present even in their disappearance.

With Hoffknecht, one can discover something like the pathology of things, or the need for psychotherapy for the object.

Tobias Hoffknecht was born in Bochum in 1987 and studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under Rosemarie Trockel, where he now lives. His works can be found in important collections such as the Falckenberg Collection in Hamburg, the Soart in Vienna, and the Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur in Bonn. They have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including in The Hague, Athens, Milan, Turin, New York, São Paolo, Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, and Madrid.