Salon Kennedy proudly presents „True size comes from within“ the first solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Felix Oehmann in Frankfurt.

The show provides an overview of the different fields and levels Felix Oehmann’s sculptural practice is operating in. Constantly ranging in size from petit to monumental, the title of the show captures that very motion. Even in the simple drawing or sculptural sketch, it is always an inherent larger-scaled vision thereof that drives the artist and makes every work distinct.

The 19th century architecture and dignified atmosphere of Salon Kennedy put the sculptures in a vibrant contrast between a private inside and their potential of bursting to the outside. Oehmann`s work focuses on how sculpture today can exist as an autonomous and physical reality in space, contrasting the flatness of new media we are exposed to every day. This illusion of digital nearness produced by contemporary ways of communication is challenged by the striking directness and raw materiality of his sculptures. Exposing their own construction in an exaggerated manner, the sculptures emphasize the process of literally turning flatness into the three-dimensional to the extent, that the sculpture`s upright posture is always risking its collapse. Thereby both, the content and the sculptures themselves are constantly questioning their own existence fundamentally. Unmasking their weakness is becoming their strength.
Clear signs like hearts, lips or numbers create an encounter between the sculpture, the viewer and the artist at the same eye level. His interest and use of high dichotomies and low motives produce a constant rotation of nearness and distance. Celebrating this radical ambivalence, the sculptures and their separation of space lead to the question how distance can be overcome in their own place. They are the place of collision: between here and there, world and individual, history and presence. It is the place of transferring energy between the individual and one another.

Preceding the exhibition, the project „Big Smile and a Wall for Frankfurt“ organized by Cultural Avenue and Felix Oehmann is creating a sculptural intervention in the public realm at this year Museumsuferfest in Frankfurt. This will be an attempt to make Oehmanns approach on sculpture become a lively and direct experience as a public environment.

Felix Oehmann (*1985, Heidelberg) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and graduated 2012 as Meisterschüler of Prof. Harald Klingelhöller. His works have recently been exhibited in a double solo exhibition with Salome Ghazanfari „United Colors“ at Cruise & Callas, Berlin, in the group exhibition „Better than your neighbour“ at KuWi, Wiesen and will be on view later this year at „Debütantenausstellung“ at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe.

Please click here to see insights to the Museumsuferfest intervention.