Baroque frames – the epitome of the museum – are of particular significance in Zimmermann's artworks. They grant every picture authenticity. While Zimmermann sprays a realistic looking shaded frame onto his works on walls, he creates intricate picture frames with plasticised ornaments for his large-scale canvasses. Artificial 'museum' dust completes their patina effect.
Vita
Graffiti art and classic oil painting; two styles that could not be any more different unite on the same canvas in Guido Zimmermann's large-scale works. Zimmermann intends to "take the museum to the street".
During his youth as a graffiti artist, Zimmermann increasingly created 'characters' and sprayed figures rather than lettering. Later on he took his designs into the studio where he drew in detail and experimented with art historic styles to eventually combine raw graffiti with detail-rich canvas painting.
His anthropomorphic subjects, people in the shape of animals, become ironic stars — paradox and controversy invariably inform his interpretations. We see Mao Zedong as a duck, Goethe as an eagle and Vermeer's Woman with a Lute as a tame lamb that plays the instrument with its hoofs.
In his works, Zimmermann deconstructs traditional rules and hierarchies and thus creates new concepts that do more than merely entertain and decorate.
Guido Zimmermann (1978) is an illustrator and artist who lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.