From Portikus.de:
Franz Ackermann studied fine arts in Munich and Hamburg.
The young artistic work of Franz Ackermann, as well as his methods of research, cannot be fixed to a certain genre or to a certain medium. Using small-formatted works on paper, large-formatted photostats and objects, he creates images and memory traces of explorations of cities. Cities as spatial but also mental orientations within an urban network; urban structure as a model for cultural and social systems of reference - these are themes Franz Ackermann is preoccupied with in an individual and virulent manner.
During a one-year working stay in Asia and continued in numerous extended travels, Franz Ackermann has created a series of more than 100 small-size water-colour works and collages. In these so-called "mental maps" the artist investigates the urban structure and situations of a city. The "city maps" reconnoitre the geomorphic and topographic conditions of a city, to then turn them into individual and subjective images. The pictorial solutions are at once characterised by biomorphic chaos and well-ordered stringency; their ornamentality highlights the fact that we are not dealing with an imitation of functional cartography, but with a subjective, "mental" experience of the city. Apart from these "mental maps", pictures painted directly on the wall and several photostats created specially for Portikus will be exhibited.
