Kevin Lüdicke – A rainy day in May
- Jonas
From fountain installations to automatic drawings, Kevin Lüdicke’s works span introversion and extroversion, humor and contemplation. His current show at Gegen & Lücke in Berlin shows how inseparable life and art are connected in his practice.
Art cannot only be seen in galleries and museums, nor can it only be created in a studio – with an attentive mindset art can be found anywhere. A prominent example is Paulus Goerden. The artist and social media personality became known for his “Alltagsinstallationen“ (“everyday installations“), where he finds peculiar arrangements of objects on the street and interprets them as art installations. Much of his success stems from the controversy of his takes and viewers getting offended by his definition of art.
Like Goerden, I would argue that this is not a bad thing because offended or not – it makes viewers think about their definition of art and helps blur the perceived border between life and art.
Artist Kevin Lüdicke’s work can be found right at this border. For one thing, there are his “fountain“ installations which are situated between Goerden’s “Alltagsinstallationen“ and fine art. Here, jets of water emerge from everyday objects – a backpack, an old car or a construction site – creating surreal moments embedded in the everyday. They extend beyond the sterile context of galleries or museums, right into people’s lives, forcing them to stop and contemplate what they are seeing, often resulting in a conversation with bystanders or the artist himself.
A completely different, very personal entanglement of life and art can be found in the artist’s drawings which he creates in everyday situations, at a music festival, after a day’s work or on holiday – never in the studio. Their purpose, however, is no depiction of his surroundings but rather a look inwards, a means to take a moment just for oneself.
Lüdicke is very conscious of the introverted and extroverted aspects in his art, he tells me, as we walk through his exhibition ‘A rainy day in May’, currently on view at the Berlin gallery Gegen & Lücke where they form a well coordinated interplay:
On the occasion of the opening, the artist created a site specific fountain installation outside the gallery. In what at first sight looks like a small construction site, a jet of water springs from a pile of dirt into a propped up tub. During the opening I observe an elderly man on his bike stopping to regard the odd looking scenery and sticking his hand into the fountain. Attracted by this, he makes his way inside the gallery, where visitors encounter another fountain. A stone sticks out of a bulging vase, looking as if it had been kicked there by a careless visitor. From the point of impact, water is leaking, filling the gallery space with the soothing sound of splashing water.
Idea and effect form an interesting dichotomy in these works. On the one hand, they are attention-grabbing and act as social gathering spots but at the same time “they don’t ‘pay into my ego-account’ as much“, the artist says. By his experience, they create a candid appreciation of the wonderful objects they are, without putting him as the creator in the immediate spotlight.
Next to be discovered are Lüdicke’s paintings, which are composed of bold color fields and both drawn and painted elements. Here, playful motifs like a flower growing from a drain, water droplets with faces and arrows shot into a flower’s head stand in stark contrast to their geometric arrangement, creating a tension between human logic and the resilient, carefree force of nature. However, it does not seem like Lüdicke’s intention is to put nature into a rigid, human framework, it reads more as the findings of a human analysis, proving nature’s superiority – which the artist seems to be perfectly fine with. The works radiate a sense of ease – they feel like an appeal to appreciate nature’s wonders, despite its incomprehensibility – or perhaps exactly for that reason. Never has “burying your head in the sand“ had such positive connotations like in his painting “Dreieck, stabilste Form“ (“Triangle, most stable form“) and never has a headless person seemed so much like he knew where he was going as in “Halt mal kurz“ (“Hold that for a second“).
The drawings on his canvases are largely derived from the aforementioned sketches, which the artist creates continuously and everywhere; several of these are also included in the exhibition. Drawing from his subconscious, he hardly ever knows beforehand what he will draw, illustrating how thoughts don’t follow the rigid logic we humans have created but wander and take bizarre turns. In a truly surrealist fashion, solitude, excess, contemplation and humour are presented here. A person enjoying a bath in one big drop of water, a rug in the shape of a man – his head still intact – wearing a hat, smoking a cigarette. While these drawings both illustrate the positive and negative directions thoughts can take, they are nurturing in their wit, presenting an unfiltered take on the artist’s inner life.
“A rainy day in May“ grants the visitor an overview of Lüdicke’s diverse artistic practice ranging from his extroverted, conversation-starting fountains to his introverted, reclusive drawings. The show’s title strongly resonated with me in regard to the artist’s range of expression. May, the month when the city suddenly becomes green again, when people are eager to make plans with friends, spend time outside – and then? It’s raining. With plans falling through, you now have lots of time to look inwards and contemplate, having to accept that there are things out of our control – that there are times for extroversion and times for introversion – something Lüdicke seems to have made his peace with.
Kevin Lüdicke’s solo exhibition “A rainy day in May“ is on view at Gegen & Lücke, Berlin until June 28, 2025.
