Thinking with My Hands

It attracts attention when a gallery owner, who had been active in Berlin for ten years, suddenly relocates to Waldkirchen in the Upper Palatinate. Attention is also attracted by the title of Michael Zink’s first show: “Thinking with My Hands.” Zink chose the artists Rudolf Bott, Atelier Lachaert Dhanis, Sky Glabush, Karl Fritsch, Rosilene Luduvico, Johannes Nagel, Klaas Rommelaere and Dirk Zoete, a diverse cast of characters promising a merry mix of the goldsmith’s and the silversmith’s art, painting, conceptual art, design, and ceramic art.

Atelier Lachaert Dhanis. Crossed Legs Chair, Installationsansicht Thinking With My Hands, Galerie Zink Waldkirchen. Photo Erich Spahn.

Ceramics by Johannes Nagel, Sky Glabush, Galiano, 2018, acrylic on cotton and wool, 110 x 88 cm, installation view Thinking With My Hands, Galerie Zink Waldkirchen. Photo Erich Spahn.

Klaas Rommelaere, PAST/ROME, 2019, handknotted carpet with wool in cotton on cotton fabric, 190×144 cm.

Klaas Rommelaere (left), Dirk Zoete (center), Rosilene Luduvico (right), Rudolf Bott (front left), Karl Fritsch (rear right), installation view, Thinking With My Hands, Galerie Zink Waldkirchen. Photo Erich Spahn.

Karl Fritsch forging the bowl from 1 kilogram of gold, December 2018. Photo Erich Spahn, Courtesy Galerie Zink Waldkirchen.

It is a great pleasure to plunge into the world of the “applied” arts, says Zink, who adds that the difference between “fine” and “applied” art isn’t very great. The gallery owner cites an example which he’ll present at his opening show: “Karl Fritsch reshaped a one-kilogram gold ingot into a bowl. By blithely transforming a paragon of financial value into an inconspicuous little bowl with an almost prosaically simple shape, Fritsch created a first-rate conceptual artwork! If anyone thinks he can top that, I want to see it! I no longer see much difference between ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ art!”

Via Munich, New York and Berlin to Waldkirchen

Michael Zink established an art gallery in Regensburg in 1994. After stopovers in Munich and New York, he was drawn to Berlin, where he and Florian Kromus collaboratively ran the Kromus + Zink Gallery on Linien Strasse in the city’s Mitte district for ten years. He had lived in southern Germany throughout those years, so the gallery owner decided that the time had come to “bring life and work back to one place.”

The village of Waldkirchen is an ancient pilgrimage site southeast of Nuremberg. The town’s former vicarage, which was built in 1886, was temporarily repurposed for the gallery’s curated exhibitions. In the autumn of 2017, Zink converted a neighboring building into a gallery space, art warehouse and artist’s studio. The renovations were designed and planned by the Lausanne-based architects Atelier Dimanche – Matthieu Robitaille and Tamara Henry.

Commenting on his gallery concept, Michael Fink says: “Right from the start, our primary interest has been to find artists who have both strong artistic vision and the potential to build a coherent oeuvre in the context of contemporary art.” With his gallery, he wants to help artists develop their work and their careers by successfully placing their artworks in institutional and private collections and by making their creations visible in major international exhibitions. “We believe in a candid and honest dialogue on artistic content and formal qualities with our artists, collectors and institutions.” This is also why Fink collaborates with a network of contemporary galleries throughout Europe. He believes in collaboration rather than competition. Michael Fink says that “we have a lot of fun and are very successful with this approach.”