Tilo Uischner

Always been asked why I have chosen to work with wood I can only say that I love this material for so many reasons. It brings its own story into the picture, it reveals its character while you work with it and keeps its final secret till the moment when you apply the first layer of laquer. Wood for ages was around people to create homes, warmth or to decorate. I think it is almost exclusively seen as something very positive and in my pictures it constitutes an inviting familiarity although one might find something unexpected behind trusted facades.

I focus on people and try to portrait them as they would tell me the truth about who they are and what they have experienced. Moments of honesty, situations of importance provocing questions, answers and all kind of interpretations I want to conserve and to present in a neutral and subtle way. Very often these stories are about me.

Mostly I avoid titles or symbols explaining too much or directing the viewers to a certain interpretation. Always searching for ambivalent facial expressions or circumstances I want to prevent the possibility of a clear, an absolute, an objective way of explanation. One should just feel it as an impulse and refer to ones own character. For me it is very exc...

Foreword by Marc Pachter, July 2011, Riesa

"The Artistry of Tilo Uischner"

One of the odd things about how we think of art is our inclination to categorize an artist based on the medium he or she chooses to employ.
So we refer to someone as a "sculptor," or a "painter," or a "print-maker." But what if the artist uses an unusual medium? Do we coin a new phrase? Do we pretend the medium doesn't matter?
In the case of the remarkable artistry of Tilo Uischner we have a way out of our dilemma. Certainly we do not coin a new phrase. It would be unnecessary to do so. The medium of wood, acting more like painting than sculpture in his use of it, does not define him, although we marvel at his mastery of it. Once we applaud his technique, which coaxes out of this organic substance a range of subtle visual meanings we had not expected, we realize that for Uischner as for all artists of range and depth it is what he seeks to express that moves us and defines him.
If we must categorize him at all, we can focus on his subject mat-ter, for in most of his work Uischner looks at human beings, their faces, their postures, the angularity of their bodies. This artist is a portraitist, or better said, a portrayer of the poignancy, the cont-radictions...