Florian Borkenhagen

Once again, the harbour takes centre stage in Borkenhagen’s work: a home, a place of longing, a witness to departures and arrivals, beautiful and shabby, bustling and sluggish, mysterious and bleak. The sculptor and photographer explores the poetry of what has been left behind, forgotten and hidden from view.

His works pay homage to creaking industrial installations, idiosyncratic forms and everyday objects that have become superfluous.

Yet the professor of design does not lose himself in sentimental nostalgia. On the contrary: his exhibits are, on the one hand, modern experiments in form inspired by the harbour and, on the other, reinterpretations composed of found objects. Those who seek the connection will find it. Those who do not are nonetheless stimulated.

The artist’s exhibition ‘Hot Dock’ at Galerie Schimming is like a play; the sculptures are both actors and stage set: their story unfolds without words. Wild and witty. Even those already familiar with Borkenhagen as an artist will be surprised: loud forms, colours and materials, coupled with a seemingly inexhaustible stock of found objects. At times his imagination gives rise to modern design with practical value; at others, he gives worn-out everyday objects a ‘second wind’.

It is inspiring and fun to follow the artist Florian Borkenhagen into his world, where the absurd is created from the obvious and design turns into art.