With Flight Mode, Thomas Rentmeister presents his third solo exhibition at Galerie Tobias Naehring. The exhibition brings together nine medium-format works on paper and two sculptural works in cast iron: an aircraft-like sculpture mounted on a pedestal and an amorphous, wall-mounted form.

For many years, Thomas Rentmeister’s work has been characterized by a precise yet playful engagement with material, form, and meaning. A subtle humor is a defining feature, arising from art-historical references, formal shifts, and a reflective consideration of art on a meta level. Materials and forms function less as fixed propositions than as carriers of quotations, associations, and open fields of meaning.

The aircraft-like cast-iron sculpture deliberately oscillates between object, sign, and idea. It evokes associations of technology, progress, and mobility while simultaneously carrying a dystopian undertone. Here, the motif of flight does not appear as a promise but as an ambivalent cipher situated between control, suspension, and latent threat. This field of tension is also articulated in the title Flight Mode, which refers less to movement than to distancing, deactivation, and critical reflection.

The wall-mounted, amorphous cast-iron work expands Rentmeister’s sculptural vocabulary. Its open, organic form stands in deliberate tension with art-historically shaped expectations of sculpture and material. Between reference, ironic disruption, and autonomous form, the work unfolds as a constellation that consciously suspends perception.

The medium-format works on paper constitute the central component of the exhibition. They function as autonomous works that translate classical sculptural questions of space, form, material, and balance into a contemporary context. Beyond the large-scale installations and sculptural excess often associated with Rentmeister’s practice, these works also mark a point of orientation within his oeuvre. The sheets engage with art-historical references, contemporary phenomena, and formal possibilities, consistently inflected with a trace of humor and reflective self-referentiality.

Thomas Rentmeister is among the most widely recognized German artists of his generation. He teaches at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and exhibits regularly on both national and international levels. His well-known works in polyester are held in major collections, including the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt. The new cast-iron sculptures formally and conceptually connect to these positions while further expanding Rentmeister’s sculptural spectrum.

Text: Tobias Naehring