If Franz Ackermann was a car, he’d be a hybrid of a Volkswagen 1500 and a helicopter: a vehicle capable of travelling on land and air, surmounting every impediment to free movement and leapfrogging continents. Having found the formula for precisely this ‘unidentified flying object’ in a novel, Ackerman set about constructing a prototype (Helicopter no. 21, Flucht- und Befreiungsfahrzeug). The sketches of the car are also an element in the work Permanent Departure (2003), whose title gives a fair idea of what he is about. Constantly on the go, he is forever journeying around the world, making discoveries and then moving on, recording his impressions in drawings and little paintings on paper, his so-called mental maps. These are abstract mental jottings, triggered by places and ambiences, which, back in the studio, combine with visual reflections and recollections to transmute into large-scale oil paintings called ‘evasions’.
The theme that most pervades the paintings is travel and movement. In abstractions of travel’s external and interior trajectories, the contours of topographical points of reference stand out: mountains, gorges, cities, islands, fields and roads. A wide assortment of localities – from tropical isles through mega-cities to rubbish dumps – find their way into Ackermann’s mappings, where everything is imbued with meaning and semiotic potential. Aeroplane windows and rotating rotary blades form a framing device, ensuring that the practical aspects of travel are ever present in the picture. The journey is always both inner and outer, a feature underscored by the exhibition aesthetics. When showing his paintings, Ackermann frequently paints the wall itself, the painted canvases being hung on the painted surface, in juxtaposition with photos and video projections. The floor is graced with painted geometric objects and extruding surfaces such as ramps and floating horizontal planes. His installations have no centre; it’s not possible to scope out the whole from a single vantage point. You have to wander around them, your head swivelling in all directions in order to get a handle on them, the body fully engaged. At Karriere, very appropriately, Ackermann is responsible for painting the walls surrounding the dance floor, which doubles as a venue for lectures, screenings and concerts – a synthesis of movement, mental and physical. (PKE)
Franz Ackermann, born 1963, Neumarkt St. Veit, Germany