Thomas Emde

1959
1977/80

1983/85
1985
1988
1990
1990/91
1991
1996

born in Korbach, Germany
education as "Farbretuscheur" at publishing house Frankfurter Rundschau,
Frankfurt, Germany
Studies of "Free Art" at HbK, Kassel, Germany
Studies of "Free Art" at HdK, Berlin, Germany
Studies of "Fine Art" at Canterbury College of Art, GB-Canterbury
"Meisterschülerabschluß" at HdK, Berlin, Germany
Studio scholarship from the city of Frankfurt and the Jürgen-Ponto-Stiftung
Prize-winner of "Forum Junger Kunst"
Work in public space project at Commerzbank Tower, Frankfurt, Germany

lives and works in Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Exhibitions since 1989 (Selection)

Van Reekum Museum, Apeldorn, The Netherlands (cat.)
Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany
Gallery Orms, Innsbruck, Austria
Museum Kaufbeuren (together with Thomas Ruff), Germany (cat.)
Kunst-Museum Ahlen, Germany, (together with T.Deyle, R-M. Heßling) (cat.)
"Zusammenkunst", Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany
"Visions of a new morning", Hambacher Schloß, Neustadt, Germany (cat.)
"Red Painting", Newspace Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Main Art Gallery, California State University, Fullerton, USA (cat.)
Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren, Germany (cat.)
Paco Imperial, Rio Janeiro, Brasil (cat.)
Casa das Rosas, Sao Paulo, Brasil
Palacio des Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brasil
Gallery Marilia Razuk, Sao Paulo, Brasil
"Über die Grenze von Form", Bahnhof Westend, Berlin, Germany
"Telemidia Project", Sao Paulo, Brasil
Centro Wilfredo Lam, Habana, Cuba (cat.)
L. A. International Biennial, Newspace Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
L. A. International Biennial, LASCA Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
San Rose, Costa Rica
Museo de Arte, Mexiko-City
State Russian Museum, The marble Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia
Gallery Erhard Witzel, Wiesbaden, Germany
Swaany Gallery, UCR Riverside, USA
Centre d´art Contemporain, Brüssel, Belgium

Gallery Erhard Witzel, Wiesbaden, Germany

Thomas Emde is firmly planted in the tradition of intense work with the material of paint and thus
of colour. He paints with paint and at the same time preserves it as "pure material". His paints
have "volume". The movement of the brush becomes a sculptural act. Regardless of wthether
it is applied thickly or thinly, paint remains autonomous in its materiality; it no longer needs a
surface to structure itself on or to give it its meaning, it becomes its own semantic agent. The
material behaviour was mostly apparent in his paint sculptures, forms congealed in mid-flux.
Subsequently he diluted the paints so much that hundreds of coats are needed to let them
slowly grow. The results are fleeces consisting of innumerable small blobs of paint.
In the coloured fleeces of Emde, which dissolve the difference between image and vehicle, the
oscillating movement between the disappearance and appearance of the picture manifests itself
in a permanent process of transformation, as the chromatic corpus metamorphoses into
chromatic appearance. The image is potential rather than actual, suspended in a transitional
state between materiality and immateriality, form and energy, appearance and illusion; it
continually creates and recreates itself in the moment of perception, depending on the
vantage point from which it is seen and the angle at which the light falls.