Elmar Lause

Elmar Lause creates bizarre fantasy figures. These captivate us in his paintings and collages as well as in his assemblages and sculptures: it seems as if they want to carry us off into their own worlds with their gazes and tell us stories. In the spirit of Appropriation Art, Lause takes up elements and characters from pop culture and comics and integrates found objects such as toy figures, fashion jewelry, and other fragments into his art. This creates absurd contexts of meaning that distort what is supposedly familiar to us and move it into new spheres.

In his current solo exhibition "Der Mond hat uns begleitet" (“The Moon Has Accompanied Us”) Elmar Lause shows, in addition to sculptures and paintings, two series that create a paradoxical temporality by reworking old landscape paintings and photographs. Some of the landscapes and photographs acquired at flea markets are painted over, collaged and placed in an unusual context so that they develop a special life of their own. Through the playful inclusion of typography and not least through the witty titles, Lause stages a multitude of levels of meaning and interpretation.