FIS-5 TOPOGRAPHIE

About Sebastian Welzel

Light and color meet sound and space Berlin artist Sebastian Welzel intertwines two creative disciplines, offering onlookers an entirely new visual experience. He combines methods of sculpture-making with those of abstract art to create… Read more

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Work Info

TOPOGRAPHIES, the collective term for Welzel’s body of works, pays tribute to the overwhelming spatial and cartographic elements of the pieces. Image, object, color, form, shape, and contrast are merged into a single energetic and metamorphic structure with individual language and characteristic texture. Sebastian Welzel, who has an architectural background and spent a year working for a renowned Parisian firm, runs a studio in Berlin where he designs and handcrafts the wall reliefs.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Light and color meet sound and space

Berlin artist Sebastian Welzel intertwines two creative disciplines, offering onlookers an entirely new visual experience. He combines methods of sculpture-making with those of abstract art to create three-dimensional imagery. While minimal and geometrically abstract on the surface, his works emerge spatially through relief-like structures. The artist combines adaptive design and color-contrasting components in a simple yet convincing manner to evoke a multi-faceted meaning.

Welzel’s creations are, at their core, modular reliefs of uniformly arranged tetrahedrons with protruding, pyramid-like tips. By individually coloring the triangular surfaces, an intense contrast of hue emerges from the surface. The form and components of the works are minimally related, yet maximally aesthetic. In a certain sense, they are tilted kinetic sculptures, equally transferring their color into space and surface.

Depending on the angle of the viewer, the works change in appearance. The surrounding light determines the concentration, hue, and intensity of the sculpture’s colors, which are also inherently shaded by the elevated tetrahedrons. The vibrancy of the shapes, in combination with the shadows of the raised format, purposefully illicit altered perceptions. In this way, a minimalist concept is made doubly effective through the eye of the viewer. Each work of art is assembled by hand, individually painted, and presents a unique appearance.

The titles – derived from music theory – suggest a synesthetic connection as well. Color and form establish, in a sense, a three-dimensional wall of sound that is felt metaphorically by the viewer.

Undoubtedly, Welzel’s creations generate strong feelings. The reliefs’ structures are also reminiscent of sound-absorbing studio wall coverings, which intentionally amplify and modulate tones and pitches. Despite these works being visual experiences, so much is felt. Tones are intensified while, in turn, other moods are softened.

VITA

Sebastian Welzel, architect and artist from Berlin-Germany, graduated in 2016 from his architecture studies at Technische Universität Berlin presenting his façade design “Waterscape” which set the starting point for his wall sculptures – TOPOGRAPHIEN. Living in Paris from 2012 until 2013, Sebastian Welzel worked for the renowned firm Dominique Perrault Architecture. Before that he worked as model maker for German artist Thomas Locher.

Exhibitions

2021	We Contemporary 2021, Vienna, Austria
2019	Galerie einseins7, Bremen, Germany
2017	Das Giftraum, Berlin, Germany Unicorn.Berlin, Berlin, Germany