Stefan Leyh »relocated #3«
March 8—April 19, 2008
Opening: Saturday, March 8, 7 pm

We are pleased to announce the showing of »relocated #3«, Stefan Leyh’s first solo exhibition at Filipp Rosbach Galerie. You and your friends are cordially invited to attend the opening at 7 pm on Saturday, March 8. The exhibition can be viewed in a private preview from 11 am to 6 pm on opening day.

Stefan Leyh is displaying works that have already been shown in various exhibitions, but never together. He belongs to a group of young sculptors from Dresden who are presently trying to take their places in the art world. He wants to discover his own reality in found images, for example from newspapers, films, and photo albums. The spatial processing of the found objects produces new connections and stories.

The room-filling installations »Last Man Standing« by this student of Martin Honert shows Liselotte Pulver standing with a wide stance and a pistol in her hand in the film »The Spessart Inn«. On this, Stefan Leyh says, »To me she seems belligerent, but at the same time humorous and charismatic. It’s also important to me to depict her exuberance and fearlessness. In this work, my romantic and childlike ideas of adventure and revolution are bundled together. The figure may be taken from a film, but in her I see the leader of a fictitious movement, clearly in association with the banner-waving leader in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.« The comedy movie of the 1950s, which was about love, greed, and courage, anticipates the Patricia Hearst story by 20 years. And in the movies, the ending is always happy.

In the sculpture »Because, because...«, a man carries a huge white hare; his toiling is evident. The lower half of the figure is missing, replaced by a framework coarsely built of roof laths. Recollections surface from the film »My Friend Harvey« or of the hare that Joseph Beuys explained art to. In the film, Dr. Chumley had to realize that Harvey, the oversized white hare, was not a figment of the psychotic imagination of Elwood P. Dowd, but actually existed. »You can get through life well in two ways. Either you are very clever or very friendly. I used to be very clever, now I am very friendly,« says Elwood P. Dowd to Dr. Chumley. It is not known whether the hare that received Beuys’ explanation of art understood this. Stefan Leyh’s hare could be a synonym for art per se: It is loved, but difficult to grasp.
—Josef Filipp

Stefan Leyh [*1978 in Meiningen, Thuringia] lives and works in Dresden.
1993-1996 studied wood sculpturing /1996-1997 works as wood sculpture;
2002 studied sculpture at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste [HfBK] Dresden.
Since 2004 in the class with Martin Honert at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm.
Josef Filipp, Michaela Rosbach, and Jörg Rosbach look forward to your visit.
For additional information and privat viewing by appointments, call: [0]172. 373 11 10