Selected Works and History of Franz Ackermann

German artist Franz Ackermann is a perpetual tourist, but not of the ordinary kind. He is on a quest for exotica in the 21st century: actively seeking cultural differences, he travels the corners of the globe, searching for the 'unknown'. Asia, the Middle East, and South America are perceived as destinations of adventure where a disquieting shift towards sameness engenders feelings of discomfort and alienation.

BIOGRAPHY

1963
• Born in Neumarkt St Veit, Germany

1984-1988
• Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich

1989-1991
• Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Hamburg
• Currently lives and works in Berlin

In Mental Map: Evasion V, Franz Ackermann creates a biotic abstraction, a template for natural phenomena dictated by design. His jumbled composition is harmonious in its turmoil: concentric patterns of colour expose hints of identifiable place (a street map, a building interior, a snippet of landscape) only to dislocate them in a maze of organic generalisations.
Franz Ackermann is a perpetual tourist: his paintings are like large trippy postcards from the edge. Dealing with globalisation and the commodification of cultural landscape, his work is representative of an ever-shrinking world.Referring to his images as ‘mental maps’, Franz Ackermann readily digests the subtle nuances of popular destinations and regurgitates them as international signifiers: brightly coloured shapes, high-impact graphics and pop iconography.

As maps, Franz Ackermann's paintings take on an all-too-familiar surrealism. Rendered with clumsy cartography, geography itself becomes unsettled. Masses twist awkwardly in time and space, unable to keep up with the concept of technological speed; the miniaturisation of the globe through supersonic flight and mass-media buzz.Through his visual travelogues, Franz Ackermann offers a provocative record of an ever-shrinking planet. Digesting the subtle nuances of popular destinations, he regurgitates them as international signifiers: brightly coloured shapes, high-impact graphics and pop iconography. Each place becomes a logoised 'non-place', a triumph of marketing over cultural difference, national identity and natural exoticism.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2004
• nonstop with the hhc Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York
• travelantitravel neugerriemschneider, Berlin

2003
• Naherholungsgebiet Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg
• Eine Nacht in den Tropen Kunsthalle, Nürnberg

2002
• Basel Public Wandinstallation Nordtangente, Basel
• The Waterfall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
• Seasons in the sun Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

2000
• B.I.T . Castello di Rivoli, Turin
• welt 1... and no one else wanted to play Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe.