Opening: October 5, 2006, at 8pm.
Thomas Ravens (born in East Germany in 1964) will present his first solo exhibition in Spain.
Seventeen watercolors of medium and big format will be exhibited, imaginary architecture being the main subject, representing a mix of utopias of the XX century together with the non modern architecture.
In Thomas Ravens’ work, the representation of mass society and urban landscape play a double role: the staged landscapes offer images of people playing the double role of watching and being watched.
In these urban and mysterious landscapes, the invented public places destined to events, take the paper or the roll that cathedrals had before as point of contact in the cities.
In these places without stable ground, the minimum silhouettes generating an anonymous crowd, could be making anything within its global confinement. A fictitious society hard to define is displayed like that, in a continuous movement given by the multiplicity and difficulty of spaces.
Ravens has a big interest in Marshall McLuhan’s ideas. Due to mass media, we know how different are the sites around the planet: architecture is power, structure and communication of power.
In his work, the complicated constructions come out from planes that sharpen the perspective. The scenes display from this perspective and thus justifying his continuous use of the watercolor, material more used in the architects’ drawings: more ironic and adaptable.
Thomas Ravens studied Linguistic Philosophy and deeply Mixed Media -with Dieter Apelt-. He also organized a series of exhibitions by different artists and spaces at the beginning of Nineties in Berlin.