KARTOFFELN MACHEN DRUCK VON UNTEN. Tex Rubinowitz

Rubinowitz's cartoons are also absurdly funny, bizarre and peppered with quirky humor. With their fine line, the drawings look as if they have been scribbled on, but always have something existential, almost metaphysical about them. The fact that the cartoons are so touchingly funny is also due to a subtle effect: they are often not as harmless as they seem at first glance. Tex Rubinowitz is an illustrator, cartoonist, travel journalist, playwright and writer whose work has appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the Austrian Standard and the satirical magazine Titanic, among others. He has also been known as an author since the Bachmann Competition in 2014. Back then, Rubinowitz won in Klagenfurt with his witty and laconic text "We were never here".

In our exhibition KARTOFFELN MACHEN DRUCK VON UNTEN: Tex Rubinowitz. Cartoons and Nitrogen we present the absurdly funny parallel worlds of the Hanover-born illustrator, including some of his countless catalogs such as "The sexual fantasies of great tits", "The seven plurals of rhubarb", "What psychiatrists take notes on during therapy sessions" (He already told me that last week...) or "What you don't like to hear from Navis" (Hm, I don't really know my way around here...). In addition to cartoons and reading material, the artist's work also includes "embroidery fabrics" - the term Rubinowitz uses to describe texts that he embroiders or roughly sews onto textile picture carriers using a sewing machine and sometimes paints. The immediacy and vagueness of these word-fabric artworks shake our understanding of reality or our social habits, for example when they say: "Potatoes put pressure from below" or "I don't want to breathe your air either!". Embroidered on white linen, these often moralistic aphorisms used to be found in every good parlor. Rubinowitz robs these blessings and words of wisdom of their usual meaning, just as he enriches our world with new meaning through his embroidery, drawings and literary works.