BENJAMIN APPEL

For his solo exhibition “Den Keller mit Beton füllen” (Fill the Cellar with Concrete), the German-Ecuadorian artist Benjamin Appel (*1978) presents an integrated concept developed especially for the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, engaging with the museum’s architecture and conceiving a new arrangement of the space. The selection of artworks presented unites for the first time a palette of works that ranges from painting to sculpture, to video, to drawing, to text and photographic works.

Benjamin Appel falls back on the simplest means available in order to materialize the idea of spatial experience: as such, the exhibition space’s right-angled corners, the predetermined rectangular forms of the canvases and his own memory form the basis for the exhibition’s works.

In his painting, it is combined color fields, applied in layer upon layer, that invoke the rectangular form of the image carrier, resulting in a poetic consolidation of space and form. The paintings are accompanied by sculptures that make direct reference to the classical and symmetrical architecture of the museum. The photographic works and drawings deal with the concretization of thoughts and memories: Floorplans of Appel’s previous apartments, drawn from memory, contain associations that allude to his lived experience. Correspondingly, landscape photos taken in Ecuador are taken from the family album and put on display. With the artwork “Zimmer mit Garten,” Appel tells the story of twelve peach trees, which appear as reproductions throughout the exhibition space.

Benjamin Appel (*1978 in Augsburg, lives and works in Leipzig) completed his studies as a student of Gerd van Dülmen, Thomas Zipp and Daniel Roth at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, where he graduated as a master’s student in 2010. Appel has been the recipient of several prizes and scholarships. His works have been shown in multiple international solo exhibitions, among others at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the H2 – Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst in Augsburg, the Kunststiftung Erich Hauser in Rottweil, the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg (Arts Foundation Baden-Württemberg) in Stuttgart, the Neue Galerie im Höhmannhaus Augsburg, the Kunstverein Nürtingen e.V. and at the CAC – Museum of Contemporary Art in Quito, Ecuador. In addition, he has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, among others at the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, at Kunsthaus Baselland, at Kunsthalle Basel, at Kunst Raum Riehen, at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, at Kunsthaus L6 in Freiburg, at Kunsthaus Zofingen, at Villa Merkel – Galerien der Stadt Esslingen, at Kunstverein Ludwigshafen as well as at the Darmstädter Sezession. He is currently preparing solo exhibitions for PIFO Gallery in Beijing, for ASPN Galerie in Leipzig and for the MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile.

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