Clemens Tremmel

‘I have this opinion that human beings are losing their original connection to nature. The sense for simplicity and truthfulness is replaced by technical sophistication, progress, growth and sensationalism. The immediate satisfaction of needs shifts to the front along with the human being turning into a controllable consumer. Transient trends are set up and influence our decisions. What to possess, who to be and how to be perceived, become utmost important. I totally reject this superficiality. Our society is a theatre, a stage where continuously new directions and styles are invented that only pretend to be important. Love of nature, sincerity and humbleness play only an insignificant role. These virtues, which were represented by the German romantics and naturalists of the 19th century and which are also the basis of my artistic argument, have almost no value anymore.’ (Clemens Tremmel)

Right after the Dark Ages the Enlightenment promised lucid order. Everything was subordinated to a rational philosophy and to the severity of the inspired by the ancient classicism. Individuality, passion and therefore individual experiences were suppressed and disqualified. Miraculousness and feelings only became possible after the rising of Romanticism. The ‘truth’ was not anymore only sought in intellectuality but also in the behavior of the common people who lived close to nature. Mysticism, folk dances (Schubert) and fables (Grimm) became popular places of longing. They were providing hold and security after the Sturm und Drang years of the Enlightenment.

Not unlike our present time. After the flood of data and images that the Internet has set off, many people are overstrained with the related countless possibilities and risks. The computer age with its groundbreaking technologies promises modern men that everything is possible, everything is feasible. Anytime. Tremmel evades these permanent expectations and their related availability and false transparency by refusing the complete image. Braving the gap provides the possibility to enter into a dialogue with the seemingly lost – because what is not visible isn’t necessarily lost.

Clemens Tremmel lives and works in Leipzig. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts Dresden in 2014. He had numerous exhibitions in galleries and received several awards such as the Hegenbarth-Stipendium and Caspar- David-Friedrich-Preis.