“Even though I don’t necessarily see myself primarily as a painter or artist, I myself am the most important tool and instrument of my works,” explained Matthias Wollgast, winner of the 2017 BONN ART AWARD. In his oeuvre the artist addresses art’s dependence on its respective media and content status. And as he himself emphasizes he is above all interested in the alternation between contextualization, (de)valuation and ascription.

Wollgast employs a wide variety of different representational formats in his art. He experiments with fluid divisions between reality and fiction, and creates narratives with different contexts. And he is preoccupied with issues relating to the construction of the past but also authorship – in particular how intellectual property is generated and by whom.

Publication plays a central role in Wollgast’s work, and in this context the catalogue published on the occasion of his exhibition “The Steps with no Name” 2018 in Kunstmuseum Bonn can be seen as a culmination of his artistic projects.