ARTIST NAME: DIRK LANGE
PROJECT: Imagine, how much fun we could have had
TERRITORY:GERMANY


Dirk Lange contemplates the work in his temporary studio


Old magazines and posters found in the Mooste schoolhouse provide a rich source of material


Resulting collages (thumbnails link to larger images)


exhibition space in the Mooste schoolhouse

My work in general...
Mainly I work with word/image combinations functioning similar to those known
as comics or cartoons. Also the figurative elements in my drawings and collages
overall correspond to these artifacts of popular culture. But I try not only to
use the formal and semantic structures on which usual comic strips are based,
but to intensify and use them for further going fictions and manipulations.

My most commonly used techniques are :
The gap between image and word :
Instead of trying to support one medium with the other, which means, to get to
a worse (but also cheaper) copy of narrative films, I try to let these media
collide in a calm, odd way. There still is allways a narrative and it is in
both, image and word, but I try to make it impossible to get it right. I kill
the stories (jokes) right before they get to an satisfying end. This can be seen
especially in dialogues : From sequence to sequence the outlooks of the
characters change, likewise the topics they are talking about. This sabotage of
the flow of communication should not only hit my characters, but also the
reader.

Animation:
I use it literally. In first instance, animation means not the movement of
something (my images are mostly static) but to give a soul to something that
doesn't have one. We know that from comicstrips and animation films as well,
mostly in the form of talking animals. I try to put this to a point of
absurdity. I' drawn singing statistics, puking theories, man-eating theaters
etc.

Caricature, Exaggeration :
Also in this point I try to step over common boundaries of the genre :
Exaggeration simply doesn't exist and out of two possibilities I allways try to
use the more impossible, more ridiculous. I beliefe that ridiculousity bears
some strange, deep force.
The oscillation between fiction and realtity, which is extreme especially in
comics, because fiction can be made catchable with simple methods, I try to pull
into a realm of maximal oddity. Here I see the possibility for free space in
mind, more inside instead of outside of some monopolar culture. I hope that this
is not only a space where strange fictions can grow, but some time real utopias.
Formal I do pencil-drawings and collage, conventional (scissors 'n' glue) and
with computer. Mostly I follow short quips which I work on in day-long acriby.
Here I see an additional point of intensifying comic's possibilities.
But in the end my work stays comic and so it also stays fishy when regarded as
art. One reason for this could be the similarity to art-history. It works with
images, but the focus is lying on the gaps between them.

Sorry, we're just at the
General conciderations on project "PostsovkhoZ 3"
I grew up in the western part of germany and hadn't got much impressions from
eastern europe, when it still was socialistic. Until the big change in the end
of the eighties I never visited these countries, even not the GDR. I don't have
any relatives there, the relationships of my grandfather who was born in the
ucraine to his former home-country were cut through the second world war and
never restored.
Believe it or not, there are some good things invented in the west : Some
parts of the youth- and counterculture of the eighties built up nostalgic
imaginations, like dreamland-utopias partly based on the few cultural artifacts
they got to know from socialistic east-europe. Films and books from these
countries had an odd seriousness and humor in the same moment which was not seen
very often in similar products made in the west. Irony seemed to be real irony
about something, problems real problems etc.
I was one of those guys who built up some "melancholic utopia" based on very
few material. Of course, our imaginations hadn't to do much with east-european
daylive, but we didn't care. For someone from east europe this must seem very
strange, but it was the truth, at least for a small group of young people.
Now, almost 15 years after the big change started, I live in the former GDR
and I see some revival going on. Know, people in the east remember their former
culture and things they liked about it : consumer-products not available any
more, movies, social arrangements etc. And again, there is a border between them
and those artifacts. But it isn't space and a wall, as it was in our case. Now
it is time, a much more solid boundary. So much seems to be lost forever. But
with an underhand proudness a lot of people in the east seem to remember the
images they shared in their former daylife and which got a certain shift in
their meaning through this sharing.
A young estonian animation filmer remembered me of this with his remark, he's
feeling a little bit ancious that the new social climate could take some energy
out of the imagination that is neccessary for creation. He seemed at least 50%
serious.

Actual proposal
The gaps between reality and the imagination we build up on parts of it are an
unexploitable source of fictions, imaginations of a second order, which are much
more incalculable than the images we make to operate with them every day and who
are in some sense prejudices (about the world itself). I want to use the
technique of collage to remind of these gaps. The collages would have to consist
out of words, images and the surrounding space they are presented in. The words
in this case should be statements from people who lived in a socialistic country
(in this case, of course, estonia) about things they liked. On the other hand I
want to use statements of people like me, who built up some imagination on
things torn apart from the area they where made in and for. I want to mix them
with images of cultural artifacts, like fotos from buildings and landscapes,
advertisements, fotos of fashion etc. I want to make these things talking
themself. These collages should be put up like posters on places of the area,
which should function as an extension of the collage.


Curriculum Vitae :
2003 Exhibition "Höxter versus Grossstadt in : Bruxismus", Blitzgalerie,
Dresden
2003 Group-Exhibition "Inital" at Blitzgalerie, Dresden
2003 Founding of Producers Gallery "Blitzgalerie" in Dresden (D)
2001-02 Studio-residence in Kruth (F)
2001 Diploma at Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Maastrich (NL)
2001 Group-Exhibiton "Aus Liebe", Galerie X-Kunst, Aachen
2001 Group-Exhibition at "Lösungs-EV", Aachen (D)(Artists Association)
2001 Group-Exhibition "Kunststof"(NL)(Art-Event)
2000 Group-Exhibition at "Lösungs-EV", Aachen
1997 Begin of study at ABK Maastricht, subject painting
1996 Worked for different Stage-Designers and Music-Fanzines
1972 Born on the 10th of september in Erbach, Germany