Discover the contemporary work of Tilmann Krumrey

Vita
Tilmann Krumrey (1966) comes from a family of artistic personalities and has a strong Bauhaus
heritage through his father Immo Krumrey (1923-2013, student at hfg ulm with Peterhans, Albers,
Baravalle, Itten, Bense and Meisterklasse Bill). First artistic impulses and experiments as a child in the
studio of the post-expressionist sculptor Doris von Sengbusch-Eckardt (1905-2002), sister of his
grandmother. Encounter with painting in the studio of her son-in-law, Prof. Albert Fessler (1908-
1978), friend of Dalí and professor of painting at the Munich Art Academy from 1945 to 1948.
Krumrey's mentor was a good friend of his father, sculptor and silversmith Prof. Hartwig Ullrich
(1932), a student at the HfBK Hamburg under bauhaus graduate Prof. Wolfgang Tümpel. Krumrey
studied art history and economics, graduating with an MBA (Dipl.Kfm.) from the Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität in Munich.

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Artist Statement
I work in the quarry of human subsistence and have the heart of a poet.
Sculpture inevitably involves the third dimension. Built space (architecture/cavity) and built bodies
(sculpture/body) are complementary forms. The dialog between space and body, between space and
sculpture, usually unfolds unconsciously and spontaneously in the space within. This is why I have
started to develop "stages" for my sculpture. In these "space installations", all the senses are
addressed by deliberately shaping acoustics, light, temperature, smell, touch and physical sensation
as a total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). These spaces alter consciousness and build bridges
between the inner world of dream and physical existence.
I work figuratively because the naked human body provides spontaneous access to the embodied
content across all boundaries. Body language is understood intuitively and universally. In contrast to
the exploration of mythological themes through the subject matter of my works, my artistic approach
is formally very systematic and strictly structured: standing, lying, sitting, hanging, jumping, running,
resting are fundamental human body states that I design and examine in their expressiveness.
Turning, separating, merging, combining, sharpening, dissolving, cutting bodies are creative
permutations that I apply to the individual postures. A two-dimensional morphological matrix can be
developed from both categories (body state / creative permutation), the fields of which represent all
the creative manifestations of these two categories and thus enable me to systematically grasp the
artistic possibilities of my work.
I prefer to use traditional materials such as stone, wood, plaster, wax, bronze and metal in order to
draw attention to the innovation in the statement and style rather than the material, as is so often
the case in contemporary art. I usually create video artworks in my spaces and with the sculptures as
protagonists. Through the (moving) camera, spatial contexts can be transferred into a two-
dimensional medium and through the film, the static dramaturgy frozen in each figure can be
transferred into the moving dramaturgy of a narrative. In my painting I realize sculptural ideas on the
one hand and spaces beyond this physical reality on the other, by confronting abstraction and color as
a quality of its own with figuration or by placing figures in inner spaces and landscapes seen only in
dreams or visions.