Christian Henkel established his own methodology of artistic practice and gave a name to it. The method is called Amateur Standard and it is to be regarded as a general term of his proceeding. Amateur Standard is the opposition to conceptualism. Don’t we all want to to prevent formalisms giving value instead to soul and passion in art? Passion goes beyond pure perfection.
Amateur is the reference term for all autodidact people, in this case it means passion and is the engine of this German artist, born in 1976 in Rudolstadt. Amateur is the opposite of professionalism and perfection. It means inadequacy but also to refrain from the pursuit of pure virtuosity, engagement in any activity as a hobby.
The Amateur deals with the consciously deliberate avoidance of perfection and intentional causing of blemishes. The Amateur is symbolized in an ironic way, the passion of a “freelance artist” who would go to work. But without an artistic failure no artistic process!
Standard stands for Christian Henkel‘s self-imposed rules of the game, his status quo: he declare himself amateur and what he is producing is the standard.
Henkel‘s work is formal aesthetic finesse, at the same time a materialistic mish mash. His newer works are more abstract, architectural and made by found objects from design history. He digests cultural artefacts from all areas and creates a new artworks with the leftovers from the past.
Many of his sculptures have an unknown purpose or reason, but an elegant character mocking any function, being at the same time highly attractive and enjoyable. Henkel seems to get pleasure from fooling the viewer’s expectations in art, don’t miss his next exhibition at Tiroler Kuenstlerschaft.
