You don't necessarily expect many people who spend their youth with spray cans and graffiti to study painting one day and have their name become a household name in international contemporary art. It's hard to say whether anyone expected this from Lars Teichmann (born 1980), but both are true: after a youth with graffiti and drawings, he began studying painting at the University of the Arts in Berlin at the age of 21. Among the few books he took with him from Chemnitz to Berlin in 2002 was "Der Bammes", a textbook on artist anatomy that describes the graphic design of body expression, posture and movement. [Gottfried Bammes (1920-2007), Professor of Artist Anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, became internationally known in 1964 with his handbook and textbook for artists, “The Human Form,” which was voted the most beautiful book of the year in the GDR (cf. Börnicke, Reimar, 2007). It has been translated into various languages and is considered a timeless standard work.]
To this day, Lars Teichmann is preoccupied with the idea that craftsmanship (seen as a result, regardless of how it was acquired) is the basis for artistic creation: "It is also an advantage to be able to ride a bicycle if you want to get on a motorbike." And the comparison with music is a little less casual: once the technical basis, mastery of the instrument, is established, interpretation, alienation, abstraction - artistic expression - begins. The less you know and are familiar with, the less you can use; the more you have seen, learned, understood and worked on, the more varied the possibilities.
Lars Teichmann's works contain references to paintings from earlier eras; he finds inspiration in costume books, historical photographs and novels. The figures depicted on Teichmann's canvas are often larger than the viewer himself; they remain in majestic poses, in a calm posture or on horseback; they dance and look at us faceless. The artist offers the individual and collective visual memory a new type of perception, directing the viewer's gaze to reduced and unadorned canvases, which have such a strong expression in their composition that they do without any superfluous attributes.
From 2002 to 2008, Lars Teichmann studied fine art under Prof. Wolfgang Petrick and Prof. Daniel Richter at the UDK Berlin. In 2006, he was a master student there under Prof. Valérie Favre. Numerous solo and group exhibitions took place during his studies and in the following years took him to Milan, Modena, Prague, Poznan, to the 54th Venice Biennale, Munich and many other places. His works can be found in public and well-known private collections; examples include the SØR Rusche Collection, the Benetton Foundation, the Berlinische Galerie and the Collezione Euromobil die Falze di Piave.
Two years ago, our gallery Lachenmann Art was particularly pleased when Lars Teichmann's works were shown at the exhibition "The Grand Opening" at the opening of the gallery in Konstanz. Since then, we have been closely working together and friends, which we would like to celebrate with the solo exhibition "Symbiosis". The tenth exhibition in our gallery in Konstanz is symbiotically linked with the first exhibition in the Satellite Office in Zurich; the exhibitions, which are taking place in parallel in Germany and Switzerland, are linked in terms of content and complement each other impressively. Both segments question the main focuses of Lars Teichmann's work in a way that is otherwise only possible in museums.
At this point I would like to express my sincere thanks to Anita Gödiker and her team from the Satellite Office Business & Conference Center, as well as to the Swiss art collector Michele Martucci, with whom it is a great pleasure and inspiration to work. Preparing and organizing an exhibition of this magnitude in two locations in two countries requires the help of many other hands and minds. Here in Konstanz, I am very grateful to Christina Wigger and Theresa Brauer for their dedicated work in all areas of the gallery, and we owe Annette Apel from Berlin the impressive photographs of the artist's works. I would also like to thank Lars Teichmann himself for his trust, his refreshing and pleasant manner, and the fantastic collaboration.
Our commitment and enthusiasm have allowed us to grow together, to form an extraordinary unity and a symbiosis.
— Juliane Lachenmann
