The museum is not the terrain Georg Winter prefers for his artistic activities, and a by and large classic exhibition situation – with works on paper on the walls – such as the one at the Städtisches Kunstmuseum Reutlingen, is not the common format in which the artist otherwise articulates himself. Temporary laboratories, interdisciplinary research projects, or self-organizing performances are the fields of activity with which Georg Winter operates in public space. In view of the artist´s great number of activities, it is easily overlooked that most of his projects are accompanied by striking woodcuts, and that they are also frequently included in his installative works.

Georg Winter, Deutscher Holzschnitt nach ´68 (exhibition view)

Winter always prints his motifs in completely homogenous black on transparent paper. Some of them seem to be descriptive diagrams that juxtapose, for example the various technical devices used for a specific project. This deliberately matter-of -fact tone he strikes almost seems to tie into what is a line of tradition that is generally rarely presented within modern letterpress printing. What it calls into mind is the imagery of Gerd Arntz developed in the late twenties for Otto Neurath´s Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, with which he visualized sociological and statistical facts.

Georg Winter, Deutscher Holzschnitt nach ´68 (exhibition views)

The weighty title the artists suggested for the exhibition, Deutscher Holzschnitt nach ´68 (German Woodcut after´68) naturally serves the internationally networked artist who commutes between Germany and Hungary as an ironic distinction from the popular treatment of the medium of the woodcut. For the Kunstmuseum Spendhaus, which has placed the focus of its activities on letterpress printing of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Georg Winter´s use of the woodcut is further convincing evidence  that the tradition-steeped museum can time and again also prove itself in the context of Conceptual Art. (Herbert Eichhorn, from the catalogue´s forward)

bis Sonntag, 06. Oktober 2013, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus, Reutlingen