for the first time to set up the exhibition Blick zurück nach vorn (Looking Back Ahead) with students of Prof. Gregor Hildebrandt from the Academy of Fine Arts. Gradually, the triangular gaps in the parquet end pieces merged with the blue triangle above the door and formed an idea.
Now, nine months later, 23 bright-blue triangles can be found in the gallery. One by Palermo, 22 by Milen Till. As a carrier of painting, the wall in Palermo’s work becomes an extension of form and colour in the architectural space, which he recognized and understood as “a dimension belonging to the work of art”.[1] The fact that now, the floor also serves as the starting point for a space-filling installation is only consistent in this spirit, therefore, as is the artist’s reaction to the found circumstances: the arrangement of the parquet and the gaps created in it define the shape of Milen Till’s “little Palermos”, the rooms their distribution – and the viewers moving about the visualization of the larger whole. The supposed emptiness of the space emerges as a projection surface for form, colour and one’s own perceptions.
“If damaged, Plaka dark blue no. 35. Warmest regards, Palermo” can be read on the back of a blue wooden triangle multiple by the artist. The production of Palermo’s preferred paint had been discontinued in the meantime, and so Milen Till was all the more conscientious in his search for a suitable way to make the repairs that the cavities of the small wooden triangles had left behind. Palermo’s idea that his work should simply be reproduced with the help of instructions, detached from any dependence on the artist’s hand, is now evident in Milen Till’s installation (and edition). Thus, his precisely fitted objects are not only “gap fillers” (Lückenfüller); they also literally pave the way for a sensual experience of art and space between the present and the past.
Milen Till was born in Munich in 1984. He is a master pupil of Prof. Gregor Hildebrandt at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Since 2015, his works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and have been published in ZEITMagazin, among others.
[1] Bernhart Schwenk, Palermo. Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001, p. 45.
