Waldemar Zimbelmann

07 November 2020 – 31 January 2021

Not least at the DELTABEBEN Regionale 2018 in the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Waldemar, Zimbelmann’s works surprised viewers with their unconventional handling of material and technique. Woodcuts, oil and reverse glass paintings make up the material context from which he develops his mysterious figural ensemble. The contours of a drawing are sometimes determined by the wood grain, at other times portraits, landscapes or interior-like scenarios develop from the inherent organic structure.  Zimbelmann in turn confronts the delicate linear drawings with the decorative colourfulness of the planar reverse glass paintings, the cut wood image with the artificial smoothness and brilliance of the glass. Employing seemingly surrealistic pictorial constructions, the artist explores the interplay of supposed contrasts and conveys them into a complex visual language in which its subject emerges in an overlapping of figuration and abstraction. In a staging of his works that veers between proximity and distance, display and demarcation, Zimbelmann creates pictorial spaces for memory portraits that reveal ambivalent interpersonal relationships.
Waldemar Zimbelmann (born 1984 in Agadyr, Kazakhstan, lives in Karlsruhe) studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe from 2004 to 2010.