Holz
Andres Bally & Michael Growe
2021
This graphic folder was created in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland and was printed in Cologne. It is one of numerous collaborations between Andres Bally and Michael Growe, who met in the 1980th while studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and have since occasionally done such joint work as a basis for discussing artistic questions.
In the course of time, large murals, panel paintings, woodcuts and works bordering on applied art were created. Bally and Growe met in these collaborative works as friends and distinct individuals who wanted to find out and formulate the intersections of their at times very different artistic positions in the production of joint artefacts.
In the course of time, large murals, panel paintings and works
bordering on applied art were created.In 2019, the two friends set up a temporary workshop on the edgeof the rainforest in Missiones, Argentina. In addition to individual works, the result of their artistic discussion was set of colored woodcuts.
“Tierra Herrumbrosa“ was printed in situ at Santo Pipo, Missiones, Argentina, in 2019.
The „Holz“ printing blocks are cut with a chainsaw from a tree that Bally cut down in the mountains and transported to a temporary studio in the valley. While Bally was working on his sculptures, Growe cut the blocks, which were printed later in Cologne. The prints are underlaid with white graffiti. Bally strives to achieve the desired result with the most rudimentary methods possible. The chainsawand splitting of the wood create very specific, strong marks. Those marks make up an essential part of the vocabulary of Bally´ssculptural language.
Growe interrupts the trail of the chainsaw with the simplest of signs, places graffiti lights under the bold, in places shiny black of the print.
Counterpoints emphasizing the strongly physical appearance of the woodcuts. Those are the high-tech prints juxtaposed with the woodcuts.
They reveal further ideas or relationships of different cultures and different people to the topic of wood. Chinese characters, chemical formulas defining the components of wood, drawings, aphorisms.
The Cologne art printer Martin Kätelhön skilfully produced fine, delicate prints from the comparatively raw printing blocks on brown soda paper, previously provided with white graffiti lights. The matt black fields of the prints are traversed by shiny lines, the luster of which competes with the brightness of the graffiti and thus elicits a sophisticated play of light from the apparently coarse print.
