Tobias Buche

buying everyday

November 17, 2018 to January 19, 2019
Potsdamer Str. 97, 10785 Berlin

In the middle of the room, unframed canvases are lain on and placed against a wallpapering table. Viewed from above they resemble neatly stretched animal skins.
High up on the walls hang an number of assemblages comprising objects and garments on wire hangers. An Asian cone hat, wooden cane, punk culture t-shirt with a cargo strap tightly tied at the waist, a netsuke, canvas insoles and a set of nunchucks. Alongside hangs a floral quilted dressing gown wrapped in a long white gauze, a gold plaster cast of Tobias Buche’s face wrapped in cotton wool, and a miniature sarcophagus made of plaster dangling from a thread. A shell resembling a Venetian mask, a lace collar, an airplane blanket, and broken tin-lead relief of the “poor poet” by Spitzweg make up another. As with the photocopied image content on the partition wall works by Tobias Buche (2004 – 2010), some of the objects in these material collages also have a commemorative value for the artist. Other things are luxury fashion references or copies of cultural icons from other cultures, such as a plastic copy of a netsuke – a horn carved japanese antique purse closure.

In many of the arrangements, there is a subtle nod towards Japan. A twisted jeans leg combines with a sinuous shrub root to resemble an Ikebana (or japanese flower arrangement). A set of nunchucks, a traditional Kobudō weapon, can be found in another. Cultural cross-references and links are a feature of all the sculptures: such as the connection between the blue denim fabric and antique Japenese grey and black striped overalls – both are indigo-dyed, a technique developed independently in parallel in different cultures. Aesthetics of high and low culture, modern and antique, remodeled and married up.