Johannes Wohnseifer, artist,
born 1967 in Cologne, Germany

Johannes Wohnseifer lives and works in Cologne and Erfstadt. Instead of studying art, from 1992 to 1997 Wohnseifer immersed himself in the business of being an artist while working for the German artist Martin Kippenberger.
Wohnseifer plays with the cultural transformation of classic landmarks of media, architecture, art and design. The exhibited objects show ‹ bookshelves › which are put together with 9 elements exactly matching in size, material and form the elements of the famous Berlin chair by Gerrit Rietveld. The De Stijl designer Rietveld designed this sheet metal chair in 1923 for an exhibition in Berlin and offered it as a royalty- free assembly kit. The original Rietveld chair was black, white and grey. Wohnseifer uses these colours in different variations or paints the shelves in monochrome yellow or white or red—colours taken from the standardized RA L palette which the artist uses in many of his works. The artist also plays with the idea of object ‹ recycling ›, a widespread practice in non industrial countries in which discarded materials with almost no obvious value are transformed into practical or humorous products. He titles his transformed objects with street names pertaining to the African quarter in Berlin: Wedding, Sambesistraße, Ugandastraße, etc. Those names stand for an uncritical appropriation of a very questionable part of German colonial history as represented within the Berlin streetscape. Wohnseifer’s work has been shown internationally in many exhibitions and collections including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Projektraum, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Bonner Kunstverein, Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Ludwig Forum Aachen, Aachen and Ulm Kunstverein, Kunsthalle in Vienna, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach.

Johannes Wohnseifer, artist, born 1967 in Cologne, Germany

Johannes Wohnseifer, artist,
born 1967 in Cologne, Germany