Circleculture Gallery will presented the first double exhibition of the painter and emeritus School Master of the Leipziger Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Prof. Arno Rink and his daughter Oskar Rink (artist name).
Notorious for the elitist education of his school, Arno Rink was renowned as the pioneer of the New Leipzig School in the 1990s and guided artists such as David Schnell, Christoph Ruckhäberle, Mirijam Vlamming, Timo Baumgärtl and Tim Eitel on their way to international success. The dreamy, architectonically primed worlds of the young graphic painting turned the art market euphoric like no other German movement had before. Arno Rink’s most accomplished pupil, Neo Rauch replaced him eventually in 2005 after over 27 years as the Professor of Painting at the Leipziger Hochschule.
Arno Rink’s daughter, born in 1980 in Leipzig, works under the artist name Oskar Rink. Growing up in her father’s studio, she befell early on to search for her own way into the art world. As a fashion designer, illustrator and cook, the London based artist resigned from following in the footsteps of her father and mentor in order to develop entirely her own new language in painting and objects. She subordinates her work completely on the haptic aspects of engineering and building. From paper and thin wooden sticks, sometimes also buttons, she forms fragile worlds, paper fragments of pictures, which are illustrated surfaces and delicate objects at the same time.
The relationship between Arno and Oskar, which is characterised by a continuous personal and creative exchange, stands at the focus of the long planned joint exhibition of the two. What has developed from the intensive collaboration from the Rinks’ atelier is reflected in the double exhibition at Circleculture Gallery. The dialogue between the artist’s generations, traces the heterogeneous approach of their respective artwork as well as the mutual harmony and symbiosis in their work. The usage of the figure in the room, the experience of an unstable state of the individual in the world defines the works on canvas of Arno Rink; and even out of the fragile spatial structures from Oskar Rink, formed from soft white paper, various figures separate themselves.
It becomes apparent in the nine works of daughter Oskar Rink, as well as in the six works from Arno Rink, how both artists thematically approach themselves in order to then find very different outcomes. „It is just as always: the closer one approaches, the larger the differences grow. One of which should be emphasised here: Arno Rink never hides the weight of experience, it is even burdened in the beauty of femininity, the beauty of shape. This weight is confronted by the paperworks [of Oskar Rink] in a playful deconstruction – to attain an astounding lightness with every new figure and her multi-structured object[s]. Indeed, she is looking back, changing between artifacts and modern archetypes, to see if there is any authenticity, or just beauty.“(Meinhard Michael, Tastend Mimetisch. Über Arno und Oskar Rink, 2012)
